"Nam et natura futura praesentiunt, ut aquarum fluxiones et
deflagrationem futuram aliquando coeli atque terrarum," etc.

Cic. _Acad. Quaest._ iv. 37.:--

"Erit ei persuasum etiam, solem, lunam, stellas omnes, terram, mare,
deos esse ... fore tamen aliquando ut omnis hic mundus ardore
deflagret," etc.

Cic. _Somn. Scipionis,_ vii.:--

"Propter eluviones exustionesque terrarum quas accidere tempore certo
necesse est, non modo aeternam, sed ne diuturnam quidem gloriam assequi
possumus."

Seneca, _Consol. ad Marciam_, sub fine:--

"Cum tempus advenerit quo se mundus renovaturus {365} extinguat ... et
omni flagrante materia uno igne quicquid nunc ex disposito lucet,
ardebit."

Id. _Natural Quaest_. iii. 28.:--

"Qua ratione inquis? Eadem qua conflagratio futura est ... Aqua et
ignes terrenis dominantur. Ex his ortus et ex his interitus est," etc.

There are also the Sybilline verses (quoted by Lactantias _de Ira Dei_,
cap. xxiii.):--

"[Greek: Kai pote ten orgen theon ouk eti praunonta,]
[Greek: All' exembrithonta, kai exoluonta te gennan]
[Greek: Anthropon, hapasan hup' empresmou perthonta.]"

Plato has a similar passage in his _Timaeus_; and many others are quoted by
Matthew Pole in his _Synopsis Criticorum Script. Sacrae Interpretum_; on 2
Pet. iii. 6. 10.; to which I beg to refer MR. SANSOM; and also to Burnet's
_Sacred Theory of the Earth_, book iii. ch. 3.

T. H. KERSLEY.

King William's College, Isle of Man.

_Combs buried with the Dead_ (Vol. ii., pp. 230. 269.).--On reference to
Sir Thomas Browne's _Hydriotaphia_, I find two passages which may supply
the information your correspondent seeks as to the reason for combs being
buried with human remains. In section i., pp. 26, 27. (I quote from the
Edinburgh reprint of 1822, published by Blackwood) the author says:

"In a field of Old Walsingham, not many months past (1658), were digged
up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not
a yard deep, not far from one another, not all strickly of one figure,
but most answering these described; some containing two pounds of
bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth,
with fresh impressions of their combustion, besides extraneous
substances, like pieces of small boxes, or _combs_, handsomely wrought,
handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some
kind