ARCHAEOLOGICAL SECTION. I! 
noise. Sometimes the people catch all the dogs they can find, and 
beat them ; it is believed that the big dog in the sky will leave off out 
of sympathy with the little ones. Here is a mass of evidence, drawn 
from all the lands of the earth, shewing that the moon is regarded 
as either a living being, or the home of one of them. ‘The man, the 
dog, and the bundle of sticks all find their parallels. It is thus 
clear that our nursery tale goes back to the infancy of the world; 
the Sabbath-breaking is an addition which belongs to some period 
within the last 1800 years. 
The lecture closed with a word of warning. Everyone should 
be careful not to have his hair cut at full moon ; as the moon wanes, 
the remaining hair on the head will wane ; and when the moon dis- 
appears, the head will be bald. Also linen shirts washed at the new 
moon will bulge out and pucker as the moon waxes. 
The second lecture was given in the Summer Term, in prepara- 
tion for an expedition to the remains of a Roman Villa at Whitcombe. 
A sketch of the history of Roman Houses was given. The Romans 
originally lived in huts made of a framework of poles, roofed with the 
branches of trees, which were tied together at the top, and the 
interstices filled in with wattling plastered with mud. One of these 
huts used to be preserved in Rome asa sacred relic. It was called 
the hut of Romulus (casa Romuli), and stood on the Palatine Hill ; 
it was afterwards removed to the Capitoline. A very good idea of 
these huts may be got from a very curious kind of cinerary urn found 
in Latrium and Etruria. It is well known that savages often bury 
a man in his house, which they shut up with all his possessions in it 
and use itnomore. ‘The ancient Italians hit on an economical way 
of satisfying their scruples without expense. ‘They made a. minia- 
ture clay hut, and placed the man’s bones or ashes in it. The 
structure of it is perfectly clear; it is built as described above, and has 
a door closed by a bar. (Specimens are in the British Museum.] 
These huts idealised gave the shape of the Temple of Vesta, in 
which, as is often done in the chief’s house of a savage tribe, fire was 
kept burning day and night. 
The Roman Villa of the classical period, however, was a 
Romanised Greek house. It consisted of an inner court  sur- 
rounded by buildings, following more or less a fixed plan, yet 
must not suppose that the plan was never varied. There was as 
as much variety in Roman houses as there is in English. Plans 
