141 



design to her second husband, Claudius Pompeianus, a senator of dis- 

 tinguished merit and unshaken loyalty ; but among the crowd of her 

 lovers (for she imitated the manners of Faustina) she found men of 

 desperate fortune and wild ambition, who were prepared to serve her 

 more violent as well as her tender passions. The conspirators 

 experienced the rigour of justice, and the abandoned Princess was 

 punished, first with exile and afterwards with death." As the bronze 

 coin of Lucilla was probably struck between i6i and 169 A.D.j or not 

 later than 180 A.D., the date of the primary interments could not be 

 further back than the latter end of the second century, so that these 

 graves of Roman or Romano-British origin were not of more remote 

 antiquity than the beginning of the second century of Roman occupa- 

 tion. At that time HoUingbury Castle, less than a mile and a half 

 away, was a Roman fortified camp. The hamlet of modern Preston, 

 or Priest-town, might have been the site of a Roman village, while the 

 portion of ground just opened and close to the little stream which 

 emptied itself at that early period into the Pool (the modern Pool 

 Valley) of early Brighton, might have been a grave yard removed some 

 distance, as was the custom of our forefathers, from human habitations. 

 One curious circumstance should be mentioned — the finding a 

 portion of what appears to be a wall composed of flint and mortar, 

 at a depth of some five or six feet. This, at present, was an unex- 

 plained mystery, unless the monastery, said to belong to Preston, was 

 situated near this spot. Further excavations might reveal other and 

 more certain evidences, but what had been turned up clearly esta- 

 blished the existence of several early graves in an unsuspected place, 

 and confirmed the often-made assertion that the whole island gave 

 evidence of Roman occupation. 



June 22nd. 



^IICROSCOPICAL MEETING. 



The evening not being devoted to any special subject, slides of 

 various objects were exhibited ; amongst the most novel, if not most 

 interesting, of which were some diatoms and foi'aminifers dredged up, 

 at a depth of 3,000 fathoms, in the Pacific Ocean during the recently 



