“Shortly after the Afghan war of 1878, Surgeon-Major T. Barnwell and I were told off to take a large number of time-expired men, invalids, and wounded, to Deolali on their way to England. Some of the wounded were in a very critical state, necessitating great care; one man in particular, Trooper Holmes of the 10th Hussars, who had an ugly bullet-wound running along his left thigh and under the groin. Our only means of transport for these poor fellows was the ‘palki’ or doolie carried by four bearers at a curious swinging pace. When we got to Nowshera, Holmes seemed on a fair way to recovery, but the swinging of the doolie seemed too much for him, and he grew weaker day by day till we got to Hassan Abdool, when we could not rouse him to take some nourishment before starting on the march, and to all appearance he seemed perfectly dead; but, as there was neither the time nor convenience to hold a _post-mortem_, we carried the body on to ‘John Nicholson,’ where, the same difficulties being in the way, and no facilities for burial, we were obliged to put the _post-mortem_ off for another day, and convey the corpse to Rawal Pindi rest camp, where we laid him on the floor of the mortuary tent and covered him over with a tarpaulin. This was his salvation, as next morning (_i.e._, the third day succeeding his ‘death’), when we raised the tarpaulin to hold the _post-mortem_, some hundreds of field mice (these tracts are _noted_ for them) rushed out, and we noticed that Holmes was breathing, though very slowly--five or six respirations to the minute--and there were a few teeth marks where the mice had attacked his calves. To prevent a relapse by the jolting on further marches, we handed him over to the station hospital staff, who pulled him round, and then forwarded him to the headquarters of his regiment at Meerut.” A lady, distinguished alike for her literary gifts as well as for her philanthropy, sends me the following:-- “I am much obliged to you for sending me ‘Perils.’ It is a terrible subject, and one that has haunted me all my life, insomuch that I have never made a will without inserting a clause requiring my throat to be cut before I am put underground. Of course one can have no reliance on doctors whatever, and I have myself known a case in which a very eminent one insisted on a coffin being screwed down because the corpse looked so life-like and full of colour that the friends could not help indulging in hopes. [CASES IN IRELAND.]