The writing stylus, then, from the fact of its being at hand and of suitable shape was occasionally, perhaps often, used as a surgical instrument. I give a figure of a stylus in silver, beautifully oxidized, which was found at York while making excavations there in constructing the railway (Pl. XVII, fig. 3). Pl. XVII, fig. 6 shows an instrument which is figured by Vulpes (op. cit.) as a specillum. Personally, I think its highly ornamented form shows that it is rather a domestic article, but, as no information is available as to the surroundings among which it was found, we can only say that its shape fits it equally well either for writing or minor surgical manipulations. _Grooved Director._ Although we have no actual description of a grooved director, we have many manipulations described in which such an instrument would be used nowadays. For example, in describing the treatment of fistulae Celsus says: In has demisso specillo ad ultimum eius caput incidi cutis debet (VII. iv). 'A director being inserted into them down to their termination the skin ought to be incised.' It is interesting to find that we have at least one grooved director extant to prove that this instrument was known to the Romans. It is in the Section of Surgical Antiquities of the Musée de Cinquantenaire, Brussels, and it was discovered, along with several other surgical instruments, in a surgeon's case of the usual cylindrical form. It is 15 cm. long, 2 mm. in diameter. A deep groove runs for 6 cm. from one end. The other end terminates in a small button. It is of silver, as also were the other contents of the case. It is possible that grooved specilla may have been in quite common use, but may have been made of wood or tin, and have therefore not survived; because we learn from Galen's Manual of Dissection that probes which were used as directors in dissecting work were generally of wood, such as boxwood, so that they might not chip the scalpel (ii. 711). _Surgical Needle (three cornered)._ Before discussing the eyed probes it will be well to clear the way by disposing of the needles, and of these, as the most easily defined class, it will be best to take the surgical needles first. We have innumerable references to the surgical needle though we have no actual description of it. There must have been many different sizes of it, for the manipulations vary greatly in magnitude. I shall content myself with giving two quotations describing respectively one of the largest and one of the smallest of these. Both passages are from Celsus. He thus describes the operation of suturing the abdominal parietes: