The verger informed us that the ground now opened had not been moved for two hundred years, and that a dean had not been buried within the precincts of the church for nearly one hundred years. Bearing these facts in mind, we poked about among the earth which had been thrown out of the grave. We found among the brick-bats and rubbish a few broken portions of human bones, which had evidently been buried very many years; but fastened on to one of the brick-bats we discovered a little bone which we at once pronounced not to be human. It was a little round bone, about the size of a large shirt-stud, from the centre of which projected a longish, tooth-like spine, the end of which still remained as sharp as a needle, and the enamel which covered it still resisted a scratch from a knife. The actual body of the bone was very light and brittle, and a simple test we applied showed that it had been under ground very many years. The question arose, what was our bone, and how did it get to the place where it was found? It was shown to the greatest authority we have in comparative anatomy, and he immediately pronounced it to be a spine from the back of a very large fish, commonly known as the skate or thornback. This creature has, fixed into the skin of his back in a row along the back of his tail, many very sharp prickles of a tooth-like character, and covered with enamel, just like our specimen. If one of these skin-teeth be cut out from a recent fish, the stud-like knob of bone into which the spine is fixed, will be found, serving to keep this formidable weapon (for such it is) in its proper position; and dreadful blows can Mr. Thornback give with his armed tail in his battles, be they submarine, or be they in the fisherman’s boat. How did the spine of a thornback get into Christchurch Cathedral, into ground that had not been moved for two hundred years? Before the days of Henry the Eighth the precincts, where the college now stands, were occupied by monkish buildings, where monks had many fast-days, and, on these days, were probably great consumers of fish. The supply of fresh-water fish, from the Thames close by, would hardly be equal to the demand. It is therefore probable that they procured salt-water fish, and a thornback is, above all fish, the most likely to have been supplied by the fishmonger. In an old book on fishes and serpents, we found, unexpectedly, evidence to prove that the skate--a hundred years ago--formed a favourite dish at the high tables of the colleges. The book was published in seventeen hundred and sixty-three, and the passage runs thus: “The skate, or flaire, is remarkably large, and will sometimes weigh above one hundred pounds; but what is still more extraordinary, there was one sold by a fishmonger at Cambridge to St. John’s College, which weighed two hundred pounds, and dined one hundred and twenty people. The length was forty-two inches, and the breadth thirty-one inches.”