Report of Meetings for 1885. By Jas. Hardy. 27 



Sending on the conveyance, we cross a peat-moss, much cut up 

 for turfs, to the Soman Camp. The camp is a great quadrangle, 

 comprising 32 acres on a swampy soil where next the moss, and is 

 environed with single strong ramparts, and deep ditches ; with 

 wide gates, eight in number, two on each of the four sides, and 

 defended on the outside by as many traverses. On the east side 

 where it is drier, there is an interior inner square camp of con- 

 siderable extent, with traverses, ditches, and gates, copies of the 

 outer one ; the gates are 6 in number ; the 2 of the eastern ram- 

 part forming the entrance. It requires to be laid down on a 

 plan to understand it ; and there are subsidiary structures that 

 wo did not observe. At the west end on the outside, is a circular 

 sheep stell with a strong external earthen wall. 



Here we beheld across the Kale, the steep slopes of the "Wooden 

 and Bughtrig hills, with their many memorials in dwellings, 

 defences, land divisions, tombs, and road-tracks of the pre- 

 historic races. We have here also within narrow compass, and 

 representative of the successive stages of history, the line of 

 march of the imperious Bomans, the ready passage for the in- 

 sidious moss-trooper, the convenient entry for the English 

 invader ; and coming down to a later and more peaceful age, the 

 route of transit of the grazier's stock, and of a traffic not alto- 

 gether free of those evasions of the custom laws, that so slowly 

 die out between conterminous realms. 



The birds prevalent here are Eed and Black Grouse, Curlews, 

 and Moor-pipits; and a few Starlings at Street-house. The 

 Eoman road here is very rough and unequal ; in places the pave- 

 ment having become almost obliterated in the lapse of ages. In 

 the fir plantation behind the inn, the lichens on the trees 

 showed, by their enlarged proportions, the nourishing influence 

 of the damp hill atmosphere. They were chiefly Parmelia 

 physodes. Cetraria sepincola which grows at Bughtrig appears 

 here also. 



One of the chief purposes of our visit was to examine the 

 funereal circles of standing stones on the ridge near the Watling 

 Street. The first circle (the stones are all porphyritic) has a 

 green sepulchral mound in the centre. There has been an outer 

 and inner circle, but the majority of the upright stones on the outer 

 ring have disappeared ; there being only 4 widely placed left 

 to represent them ; 1 at the E., 2 at the W., and 1 at the N.W. 

 In the inner ring which has closely followed the outline of 



