1857-59 RE-INTERMENT OF JOHN HUNTER 
79 
Professor Owen was greatly interested in this 
discovery, and Mr, Bompas, in his ‘ Life of 
Frank Buckland,’ gives the following extract from 
Buckland’s diary, February 23 : — 
‘ Down into the vaults . . . again with Pro- 
fessor Owen, who expressed himself much pleased. 
I wish I could have made a sketch of him, with 
his hand on the coffin, looking thoughtfully at it. 
ft would have made an excellent subject.’ 
Owen himself, who had just attended a Levee 
on that day, thus alludes to the incident ; — 
‘After resuming ordinary costume, I went 
^ith Frank Buckland to the vaults beneath St. 
hlartin’s Church, which are now being emptied, 
see the coffin of John Hunter, which was 
found in a corner of one of them. It was in good 
preservation, and I have written to Dean Milman 
about getting it into St. Paul’s. But such a 
scene! A score of Irish labourers hauling along 
coffins, higgledy-piggledy, from one dark 
recess to the other. The sexton, to show the 
oonscience of undertakers, pointed to one large 
coffin, supposed to have included a leaden one, 
ot never had. Putting his foot upon it, he 
pressed it down and drew back the top and one 
exposing to view the black shrivelled 
remains of the “ Hon. Lady .” A mask of 
^ ^ features had been taken by a mass of the 
c rysalises of the Dermestes, or darkling-beetles, 
inch thick. Faugh ! I quitted the scene. 
