392 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Nov. 



to bring before them had come to light, if he might use 

 such an expression, in rather an accidental way. There 

 was nothing at all novel or strange in the fact of hazel 

 nuts being found among the Roman remains. They had 

 been found from time to time for centuries past, and 

 there were a good many of them in the cases at the 

 pump room. The odd thing was that through these 

 long ages nobody ever thought of ' inquiring within up- 

 on everything,' until the results were discovered which 

 were being placed before them. The frequent occurrence 

 of the nuts was noted by Stukeley, who in 1724 wrote as 

 follows : — " It is remarkable that at the cleansing of the 

 springs, when they set down a new pump, they con- 

 stantly found great quantities of hazel nubs as in many 

 other places among subterraneous timber. These I 

 doubt not to be the remains of the famous and univer- 

 sal deluge, which the Hebrew historian tells us was in 

 the autumn. Providence securing by that means the re- 

 vival of the vegetable world." 



A sufficiently curious comment, but still nothing like 

 so curious as the fact that with the nuts to hand and the 

 microscope at their elbow, no one had thought of looking to 

 see what was inside them. On one occasion, in the ear- 

 lier days of the excavation, a man came up with some of 

 the nuts in his hand, and he (Mr. Morris) had no sooner 

 taken them up then he noticed something gleam through 

 a crack in one of them. This brought the pocket-lens 

 out and then he saw that there was really something 

 to investigate. The contents proved to be various kinds 

 of crystals, which were not only interesting and beauti- 

 ful, but were in many respects important, as bearing 

 testimony on one or two points in connection with the 

 Bath mineral waters. In some cases the kernel was 

 found to have been converted into solid calcite ; in others 

 it had perished, and the shell or testa of the nut was 

 lined with crystals. In some instances where the nuts 



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