that game on the lawn at Cliefden House in Buckinghamshire, where he then principally resided. It did not take place, however, till several months after the accident, when a collection of matter burst and instantly suffocated him."
A solicitor at Romsey, about 1825, was, says an eye-witness, struck so hard in the abdomen that he died in a week of mortification. There is a rumour of a boy at school, about eighteen years since, and another boy about twenty-eight years ago, being severally killed by a blow on the head with a cricket ball. A dirty boy also, of Salisbury town, in 1826, having contracted a bad habit of pocketing the balls of the pupils of Dr. Ratcliffe, was hit rather hard on the head with a brass-tipped stump, and, by a strange coincidence, died, as the jury found, of "excess of passion," a few hours after.
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
