llonran iitohmn mxb tht Claribian 



By JOHN BELLOWS. 



T HAVE been asked to lay before the members of the 

 Dorset Naturalists' Society some reasons for regard- 



ing the walls of Wareham as of Roman origin. As 

 these reasons depend for their force on analogies 

 drawn from other Roman remains, and especially 

 with those it has been my lot to discover in the 

 city of Gloucester, I will briefly describe some of 

 the latter, while suggesting that any argument which is based on 

 negative evidence only should be received with caution. I believe 

 about a century ago the President of the Society of Antiquaries in 

 his annual address mentioned Gloucester as a place in which nothing 

 existed to show that the Romans had ever been connected with it 

 except the Latin termination of the name. How utterly he was 

 mistaken may be gathered from the fact that since that period there 

 have been discovered there four lapidary inscriptions, pillar -bases 

 from five temples or other Roman buildings, the remains of many 

 hundreds of burials, great quantities of Roman pottery, and several 

 pavements ; while coins from Claudius to the end of the Empire in 

 Britain are so numerous that for every English coin we now find in 

 digging foundations, &c., we usually discover half-a-dozen Roman. 

 May I add to this that within the past 20 years I have discovered 



