80 ROMANO-BRITISH RELICS FOUND AT DORCHESTER. 



half, a third urn, with a filmy substance like black cobweb adher- 

 ing to the inner surface. 



In the second cavity were four urns, standing nearly upright 

 like the others, two being of ordinary size, and two quite small. 

 They stood touching each other, and close to the breast of the 

 skeleton; these, like the former, were empty, except of the chalk 

 which had settled into them by lapse of time; moreover, the 

 unstained white chalk being in immediate contact with the inner 

 surface of the vessels was nearly a proof that nothing solid had 

 originally intervened. In the third grave two other urns of like 

 description were disclosed. 



Two yards south from these graves a circular hole in the native 

 chalk was uncovered, measuring about two feet in diameter and 

 five feet deep. At the bottom was a small flagstone ; above this 

 was the horn, apparently of a bull, together with teeth and bones 

 of the same animal. The horn was stumpy and curved, altogether 

 much after the modern shorthorn type, and it has been conjectured 

 that the remains were possibly those of the wild ox formerly 

 inhabiting this island. Pieces of a black bituminous substance 

 were mixed in with these, and also numerous flints, forming a 

 packing to the whole. A few pieces of tile, and brick of the thin 

 Roman kind, witli some fragments of iridescent glass were also 

 found about the spot. 



There was naturally no systematic orientation in the interments 

 the head in one case being westward, in the other eastward, and 

 in the third, I believe, south-west. It should be mentioned that 

 the surface soil has been cleared away to a distance extending 50ft. 

 south and west from where these remains were disinterred ; but no 

 further graves or cavities have been uncovered the natural chalk 

 lying level and compact which seems to signify that the site was 

 no portion of a regular Golgotha, but an isolated resting-place 

 -'I to a family, set, or staff; such outlying tombs having been 

 nmnnoii along the roadsides near towns in those far-off days a 

 humble Colonial imitation, possibly, of the system of sepulture 

 along the Appian Way. 



