For years the controversy was carried on with a large display of learning on all sides, until one day a geologist of distinction visited the Museum, and announced that the specimen of pottery was a section of a human skull. A little examination and a comparison of the specimen with an ordinary human skull showed beyond the possibility of doubt that this view was the correct one, and the label was changed without delay. But when it became known that the Museum was in possession of part of a human skull, it was visited by hundreds of people all anxious to get a glimpse of so interesting an object, and if possible--but this was rather too much to hope for--to hold it in their hands; and for weeks the contents of other cases lay unnoticed. The broken skull was the real attraction. It was an amazingly thick skull: if it had not been so thick it would probably not have led its original owner to forfeit it, but would have suggested to him a way of escape from those unfriendly persons who had deprived him of its use. But the owner would certainly have made a good show at an old election fight, or have reached a green old age in Tipperary. I once saw on a shelf in the Museum a piece of old ironwork in the form of a rushlight holder. So it was labelled, and the date 1609 assigned to it. It was stated on the label that it was probably the work of a well-known ironworker of the neighbourhood in which it had been found. I ventured, however, to differ from this last suggestion, the fact being that this particular example of seventeenth-century ironwork was not made during that century or by that craftsman, but by a more crafty person during the latter years of the reign of Edward the Seventh. My reason for coming to this conclusion was not the result of the possession on my part of any special acquaintance with wrought-iron or the methods of the old workers, but simply because I had been present when the thing was in course of being forged--in both senses _forged._ The craftsman had been called away from his job suddenly, and when I entered his unostentatious forge there the thing was lying as he had left it, in an unfinished condition. Some days later I saw it among a heap of scrap iron of various sorts in his yard, and it rather took my fancy. I pulled it forth and asked the man if he had any idea what it was. He replied that, so far as he could remember, an antiquarian gentleman had told him that it was for holding a rushlight. I looked at it closely and said that I did not think it was old, and he replied that he didn't believe it to be very old either; but it wasn't a handsome thing anyway. I threw it down and began to talk about other matters, and the next I saw of it was in the Museum above its neatly lettered label. I told the craftsman where I had seen it, and he smiled.