168 Calne. : 
bottom of very ancient oceans, there is among the rest an ancient 
coral reef, visible at the surface at various places, from Westbury, 
by Steeple Ashton, Seend, Spye Park, Bowood, Calne, Quemerford, 
Hilmarton, and away to Highworth. At Steeple Ashton there is 
a field where almost every stone on the surface is a coral: and pieces 
are found sometimes so perfect that when laid alongside specimens 
of coral rock now forming in the West Indies it is hardly possible 
to distinguish one from the other. Calne has supplied our museums 
with many beautiful relies of the ancient world. The one perhaps 
best known is the marine shell called the echinus, an extremely 
pretty fossil of exquisite design, sometimes found lying in a mass of 
thirteen or fourteen together, just as they were lying at the bottom of 
the sea when some change happened to cover them over. Mr. W. 
Cunnington, our Wiltshire geologist, has kindly lent me two newly- — 
discovered corals of a very peculiar structure, which requires a 
microscope for examination, and the merits of which can only be 
understood by those who have made these matters a special study. 
It is enough to say that the two specimens of fossil coral now on 
the table, though in one sense so new that geologists have not yet 
assigned a name for them, are, nevertheless, in themselves of an age 
so remote that your old camps and Wansdykes are, comparatively 
speaking, things of yesterday. 
So much for the underground history, As to what is visible on 
the surface, it is only after much dry research, and with the help of 
@ good deal of supposition and guess-work, that we arrive at anything 
like a probable conclusion as to the time when, and the people by 
whom, our old earthworks were thrown up. Objections there are, 
of course, to every theory, and it seems hopeless to find one that 
shall be accepted by everybody. As to Wansdyke, it is the opinion 
of many persons that it was not constructed for military defence (for 
which it seems inadequate), but was a grand boundary line, about 
which there should be no mistake, between two ancient provinces. - 
The camps seem to speak for themselves, as fortresses and places of 
refuge when the country was disturbed, when life and property were 
not so safe and pleasant at Calne and Cherhill as they are now; but 
by whom and at what time first constructed who will venture to say ? 
