The most likely source of serious injury, is when a hitter returns the ball with all his force, straight back to the bowler. Caldecourt and the Rev. C. Wordsworth, severally and separately, remarked in my hearing that they had shuddered at cricket once, each in the same position, and each from the same hitter! Each had a ball hit back to him by that powerful hitter Mr. H. Kingscote, which whizzed, in defiance of hand or eye, most dangerously by. A similar hit, already described, by Hammond who took a ball at the pitch, just missed Lord F. Beauclerk’s head, and spoiled his nerve for bowling ever after. But, what if these several balls had really hit? who knows whether the respective skulls might not have stood the shock, as in a case which I witnessed in Oxford, in 1835; when one Richard Blucher, a Cowley bowler, was hit on the head by a clean half-volley, from the bat of Henry Daubeny--than whom few Wykehamists _used_ (_fuit!_) to hit with better eye or stronger arm. Still “Richard was himself again” the very next day; for, we saw him with his head tied up, bowling at shillings as industriously as ever. Some skulls stand a great deal. Witness the sprigs of Shillelah at Donnibrook fair; still most indubitably tender is the face; as also--which _horresco referens_; and here let me tell wicket-keepers and long-stops especially, that a cricket jacket made long and full, with pockets to hold a handkerchief sufficiently in front, is a precaution not to be despised; though “the race of inventive men” have also devised a cross-bar india-rubber guard, aptly described in Achilles’ threat to Thersites, in the Iliad.[2] [2] Hom. Il. II. 262. The most alarming accident I ever saw occurred in one of the many matches played by the Lansdown Club against Mr. E. H. Budd’s Eleven, at Purton, in 1835. Two of the Lansdown players were running between wickets; and good Mr. Pratt--_immani corpore_--was standing mid way, and hiding each from the other. Both were rushing the same side of him, and as one held his bat most dangerously extended, the point of it met his partner under the chin, forced back his head as if his neck were broken, and dashed him senseless to the ground. Never shall I forget the shudder and the chill of every heart, till poor Price--for he it was--being lifted up, gradually evinced returning consciousness; and, at length, when all was explained, he smiled, amidst his bewilderment, with his usual good-nature, on his unlucky friend. A surgeon, who witnessed the collision, feared he was dead, and said, afterwards, that with less powerful muscles (for he had a neck like a bull-dog) he never could have stood the shock. Price told me next day that he felt as if a little more and he never should have raised his head again. And what Wykehamist of 1820-30 does not remember R---- Price? or what Fellow of New College down to 1847, when “_Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit_,”