Professor Skene’s statements—first, that a description of the manuscript, with a transcript of part, if not the whole of it, was sent to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, with a request that they would patronise its publication; second, that the specimen was placed by their secretary in the hands of Sir Walter Scott, who undertook to express an opinion upon it; and, third, that the secretary and “our informant” afterwards waited upon Sir Walter to ascertain what his opinion was—are unverified. All that has yet been discovered, indeed, goes to show that nothing of the kind ever took place, and that the “facts” stated in the _Quarterly Review_ had their origin only in the imagination of the learned professor’s “reverend friend.” The minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for that period are yet in existence. They are kept with a careful, even a tedious minuteness; and is it possible to suppose that the series of events detailed in the _Quarterly Review_ of June 1847 as having taken place “about twenty years ago,” involving questions of such importance to antiquaries, especially to Scottish antiquaries, could have been entirely omitted from them? Yet they are. No mention whatever of the circumstances stated by Professor Skene to have occurred “about twenty years ago” appears. John Sobieski Stuart’s position in the affair is quite plain. We find from the correspondence that all Sir Walter really saw was the description and extracts contained in Sir Thomas’s letter of 1st June 1829; but the editor of the _Vestiarium_, aware of the fact that Sir Thomas had a transcript of the work, which he had expressly offered to show Sir Walter, and confronted with the absolute statement by Professor Skene, on the authority of his “reverend friend,” that Sir Walter had seen a transcript, arrived naturally at the conclusion that the transcript Sir Walter was asserted to have seen was the only one in existence, that made by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, and directed his reply accordingly. Had he been aware of the real facts of the case, his reply to Professor Skene might have been even more crushing than it was. Professor Skene made an attack in another quarter. He questioned the authenticity of the work on the ground that there were several and serious errors in the genealogies of the clans whose tartans are described, and he specified particularly M’Nab, Farquharson, Clan Gun, Cluny Macpherson, and Mackintosh, the occurrence of errors in regard to whose genealogies, he urged, demonstrated that the _Vestiarium_ was a forgery. To reply to these criticisms John Sobieski Stuart seriously set himself, and with remarkable ability and success.[96] Finally, Professor Skene fell foul of the Bishop of Ross’s signature.