XXVI. 



thus be tampered with ? No confident answer to either question is here 

 forthcoming, but a doubtful suggestion may be offered as to the second. 

 It seems just possible that this part of Britain, Durngweis, was so 

 thoroughly reduced to obedience by the Romans that the upholding of 

 the fortifications was given up. The counterscarp, if so, would be dis- 

 regarded as a defence. As to the first question is it just possible that 

 when Christianity became the imperial religion the sacredness from 

 pagan sanctification of the pomcerium was thought nothing of ? A second 

 note lias to do with a strange ornament lent to the Museum. It was 

 found lately in a grave in the Albert-road, and the extraordinary point 

 is that past all doubt it was encircling the femur. It belongs to 

 Mr. Hunt, the borough surveyor, by whose courtesy it is lent for ex- 

 hibition here to-day. Thirdly, attention is drawn to a section of part of 

 the Roman fossa accidentally made in digging a very deep trench to 

 drain the new West Walk garden. It is at the south-west corner of the 

 Roman rampart?. The part struck seemed to be the bottom of the fossa. 

 There appeared to be a scarp slanting from the Bowling Alley Walk, 

 then a ridge of undisturbed chalk, and then the counterscarp partly 

 seen. In fact, it looked like an arrangement identical with that un- 

 covered a few years ago in digging the foundations of South Court 

 stables at the other end of the southern wall of Durnovaria. It is right, 

 however, to say that Mr. Hunt, the borough surveyor, found under the 

 Great Western-road, close to the lately uncovered section above- 

 mentioned at Bowling Alley Walk, a depression in the chalk. This 

 makes it doubtful whether there may not have been a second or third 

 ditch there instead of the unbroken regular slope of the counterscarp at 

 South Court. It is, however, very likely that the depression under the 

 road had nothing to do with the Romans, but was a hollow lane of 

 media'val times. In any case it can hardly be doubted that the section 

 at South Court revealed a contour of the fossa like the letter W, with 

 the outer lines very long and the outer one, representing the counter- 

 scarp, slanting very gently. These discoveries have heen notified to 

 Mr. Haverfield, of Christ Church, Oxford, a great collector of infor- 

 mation about Roman finds. He writes that to him the above contour of 

 a fossa ' is quite new.' Here end these rough notes of a few of the very 

 remarkable Roman discoveries lately made in Dorchester made, too, 

 not only near the West Walk, but also about Bell-street, where, by-the- 

 bye, an extraordinary bronze chisel was found the other day. It is a 

 strangely moving moment to a mind with the least gleam of romance in 

 it the moment when those relics came to the light after a millennium 

 and a half of darkness under six feet of black earth. Whose ashes lay 



