The last example I shall adduce is that of Ben Jonson’s skull. On this Lieut.-Colonel Cunningham thus writes: “In my boyhood I was familiar with the Abbey, and well remember the ‘pavement square of blew marble, 14 inches square, with O Rare Ben Jonson,’ which marked the poet’s grave. When Buckland was Dean, the spot had to be disturbed for the coffin of Sir Robert Wilson, and the Dean sent his son Frank, now so well known as an agreeable writer on Natural History, to see whether he could observe anything to confirm, or otherwise, the tradition about Jonson being buried in a standing posture. The workmen, he tells us, ‘found a coffin very much decayed, which from the appearance of the remains must have originally been placed in the upright position. The skull found among these remains, Spice, the gravedigger, gave me as that of Ben Jonson, and I took it at once into the Dean’s study. We examined it together, and then going into the Abbey carefully returned it to the earth.’ In 1859, when John Hunter’s coffin was removed to the Abbey, the same spot had to be dug up, and Mr. Frank Buckland again secured the skull of Jonson, placing it at the last moment on the coffin of the great surgeon. So far, so good; but not long afterwards, a statement appeared in the ‘Times’ that the skull of Ben Jonson was in the possession of a blind gentleman at Stratford-upon-Avon. Hereupon Mr. Buckland made further inquiries, and calmly tells us that he has convinced himself that the skull which he had taken such care of on two occasions, [such care as not so much as to measure or sketch it!] was not Jonson’s skull at all; that a Mr. Ryde had anticipated him both times in removing and replacing the genuine article, [!] and that the Warwickshire claimant [!] was a third skull which Mr. Ryde observed had been purloined from the grave on the second opening. Mr. Buckland is a scientific naturalist, and an ardent worshipper of the closest of all observers, John Hunter. Now mark what satisfies such a man on such an occasion as this. He was wrong and Mr. Ryde was right, because Mr. Ryde described _his_ skull as having _red hair_; and in Aubrey’s _Lives of Eminent Men_, ‘I find evidence quite sufficient for any medical man to come to the conclusion that Ben Jonson’s hair was in all probability of a red colour, though the fact _is not stated in so many words_.’ In so many words! I think not! Actually all that Aubrey says on the subject is, ‘_He was_, _or rather had been_, _of a cleare and faire skin_’! (_Lives_, ii, 414.) And this, too, in spite of our knowing from his own pen, and from more than one painting, that his hair was as black as the raven’s wing! Besides, he was sixty-five years old when he died, and we may be sure that the few locks he had left were neither red nor black, but of the hue of the ‘hundred of grey hairs’ which he described as remaining eighteen years before. Mr. Buckland’s statement will be found