VI 



shape; and so, instead of acquainting us merely with the power 

 and functions of A and Z, arrange for us all the letters between, 

 and thus make out for us a consistent alphabet. 



We have been led to make these remarks from having made 

 extensive notes upon Eoman remains in Corinium, during the 

 progress of which appearances were observed, and methods of 

 construction were demonstrated to have been adopted, for which 

 there presented itself to us, until within the last few months, no 

 sufficient solution. However, recent atmospheric phenomena 

 have of late supplied the required note the connecting link ; 

 and though the resulting conclusions are not perhaps of grave 

 importance, yet, as they not inaptly show the value of our friend 

 the Captain's dictum, we shall at once give them a place in our 

 proceedings. 



In all the diggings yet made, proximity to our Eoman pavements 

 is at once manifested by a thin stratum, varying from three to 

 six inches, of fine well washed gravel. Sometimes this gravel is 

 hard and compact ; partially cemented together, it would appear, 

 by lime either in solution or suspension in water, or perhaps 

 both ; and the walls of the chambers have occasional markings 

 around them, which seem to indicate the presence of standing 

 water, at different periods, to different heights. 



Now, this gravel is for the most part that which entered into 

 the composition of the wall cement, added to which the finer 

 particles of stone in the soil would have a tendency to sink lower 

 and lower until arrested by a hard impassable stratum. 



In many instances where rude concrete pavements have been 

 formed, plastered walls have been noticed even below the bottom 

 of the floor ; while in the more general examples the concrete for 

 wall and floor is continuous.* 



In another case we had an arrangement in which the floor a 

 tessellated one was raised on a solid concrete foundation, consi- 

 derably above the bottom of the plastered and even frescoed walls, 

 leaving what appeared a deep channel or drain all around the 

 room. 



Again, in digging the foundations for the houses at Watermoor 

 (Chesterton Terrace), Eoman masonry and a vast mass of reliquia 

 of the same period was arrived at, much of which has been care- 

 fully preserved, and is now in the Corinium Museum. 



It was on account of the loose materials collected here that the 

 new foundations were dug to a considerable depth, during their 

 whole progress exposing work of perhaps sixteen centuries 

 previously ; and in this digging, at the south end of the Terrace, 

 two distinct floors were exposed, one above the other, in the 

 section, at a distance of as much as four feet apart. Between the 

 upper and lower floor was a filling up of rubbish, of which broken 



* In this, the other examples adduced, we are sorry we cannot introduce our 

 sketches, as these would doubtless explain the matter better than words. 



