184 BURIAL OF THE REMAINS Chap. IV 



places has certainly been accumulated by 

 worms, yet it seemed hardly possible that this 

 mould could have been brought up by worms 

 from beneath the apparently sound floor. It 

 seemed also extremely improbable that the 

 thick walls, surrounding the room and still 

 united to the concrete, had been undermined 

 by worms, and had thus been caused to sink, 

 being afterwards covered up by their cast- 

 ings. I therefore at first concluded that all 

 the fine mould above the ruins had been 

 washed down from the upper parts of the 

 field ; but we shall soon see that this conclu- 

 sion was certainly erroneous, though much 

 fine earth is known to be washed down from 

 the upper part of the field in its present 

 ploughed state during heavy rains. 



Although the concrete floor did not at 

 first appear to have been anywhere pene- 

 trated by worms, yet by the next morning 

 little cakes of the trodden-down earth had 

 been lifted up by worms over the mouths of 

 seven burrows, which passed through the 

 softer parts of the naked concrete, or between 

 the interstices of the tesserae. On the third 

 morning twenty-five burrows were counted j 



