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 Roman 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. 
Tn all the diggings yet made, proximity to our Roman 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), Roman 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 Corintum 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. 
