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SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Nov. 30, 1888. 



liant and beautiful at the time of excavation, and from 

 their appearance seem remarkably pure, but unfortu- 

 nately they very soon fade after exposure. Mr. Thomas 

 has, whenever an opportunity occurred, seized the oppor- 

 tunity of making a permanent register in his own studio 

 of both the colours and designs. 



Passing now to the floor, the beautiful and elaborate 

 character of the design of this pavement will best be 

 gathered from the illustrations figs. 7 and 8, which are 

 from a photograph taken by Mr. W. H. Kitchin, 

 of Cardiff. Owing to loss of notes, we are unfor- 

 tunately not able to set before our readers such a full 

 description as we wished to do. But a little attention 

 will reveal the elaborate and beautiful character of the 

 geometrical designs ; for instance, in the portions shown, 

 octagons enclosing circles and a central design will be 

 seen to alternate with square-bordered patterns, whilst 

 no two adjoining circles or squares, as the case may 

 be, contain tessellas arranged in the same order 

 either as regards shape or colour, whilst the in- 

 tervening loops or spaces are equally varied in pattern 

 and arrangement of colour. The border which imme- 

 diately surrounds these figures consists of straight-line 

 designs, triangles, and diamonds, which appear to have 

 been repeated at frequent intervals, whilst this, in its 

 turn, is encompassed first by plain rows of tessellas, 

 then by the fret border, the space between this and the 

 wall being filled up by plain tessellae. The colours em- 

 ployed are white, cream, blue-grey, red, and two shades 

 of green. Some indication of the colouring may be 

 gathered from the lights and shades in the illustration. 

 It is on this point that notes are wanting, but it is 

 certain that the effect as a whole showed considerable 

 artistic skill both in arrangement of colour and design ; 

 take, for instance, the intervening border of various 

 straight-line designs between those replete with varied 

 and numerous curves. Attention might be called to 

 many instances of well-thought-out contrasts, but space 

 will not permit of more just now It seems probable that 

 the whole series of designs repeated themselves at each 

 corner, and probably there was a very fine centre-piece. 

 Anyway, it will be noticed that the pattern at the north- 

 east corner resembles that at the south-west angle oppo- 

 site it. There is evidently no doubt that the pavement 

 belongs to the palmy days of the art, and is probably the 

 work of the second century a.d. It is noteworthy that all 

 the tessellas are nearly or absolutely cubical, and most of 

 them were obtained from the neighbouring rocks, cream- 

 colour and blue from the limestones, red from tiles, green 

 and white are marble, the former stained. The cream- 

 coloured tessellas prevail. 



Midst all this beauty, the excavations revealed an over- 

 whelming quota of horrors, for in this and the adjoining 

 room (17 in the plan) no less than forty-one human 

 skeletons and the remains of at least two horses were 

 unearthed. With the exception of one, all the skulls 

 were found fractured, which seems to indicate that all 

 these people, including men, women, and children, were 

 massacred, receiving a mortal blow on the head. Only 

 three skeletons showed any signs of the corpses having 

 received any attention ; one of these, a female figure, had 

 been carefully placed in a rough grave broken in the 

 tesselated pavement, and banked round with stones (15 

 in the plan and the somewhat obtrusive blemish in our 

 illustration), whilst the other two were buried in the ad- 

 joining room in a similar manner (18 in plan). The 

 latter room is about 16 ft. 5 ins. by 22 ft, and was connected 



with the other by an arched opening ; it is also tesselated 

 with cream and grey tessellas without design ; the walls 

 were plastered with coarse plaster with splash decoration. 

 The plastering shows ranging characters in the various 

 chambers encountered along the course of the trench. 

 It seems as if the quality of the plastering would 

 indicate the standing of the room in the estimation of 

 the Roman inhabitants of a habitation. In the present 

 instance we find fine plastering associated with the 

 magnificent pavement, coarser plastering with simpler 

 pavement, and still coarser plastering in some other 

 parts already exposed. Another point about these people, 

 a personal one : it is remarkable in what good preserva- 

 tion all their teeth must have remained during life. It 

 is quite an exception to see them decayed ; in fact, it is 

 quite possible to judge the age of these folks by their 

 teeth, the older ones having these useful organs more 

 worn down by the years of grinding or tearing they 

 have performed. The skull of the skeleton of the old 

 woman found on the steps leading to the hypocaust 

 (plan, 12) was also battered about, and when unearthed 

 her head was resting on her hand. The coins dis- 

 covered are of the reigns of the Emperors Tetricus, Vic- 

 torinus, and Constantius Chlorus, and give another clue 

 as to the date of the remains, which of course must have 

 been in existence as a habitation during the circulation of 

 the coins of the reigns indicated, and would fix the date of 

 the destruction of the place some time after the reign of 

 the last-named emperor. Several opinions as to the 

 origin, use, name, and collapse of this Roman habitation 

 have been given in the local press and by individuals, 

 and as they may interest our readers, we will give briefly 

 one or two. 



The South Wales Daily News, when noting the fact 

 of the great number of broken skulls found in the two 

 rooms (14 and 17), remarks, "It is presumed that 

 this place was the scene of a massacre by the Irish 

 in a.d. 446, when they over ran the country during one 

 of their periodical invasions." 



The Weekly Mail suggests that it may have been the 

 residence of Claudia Ruffina, the daughter of Caractacus, 

 after her return from captivity in Rome. Her Welch name 

 Eurgan is connected historically with the spot ; in fact, 

 the latter part of the name Caer-urgan seems to be a 

 corruption of her name. Some say it is the site of the 

 town Bovium ; some think it a villa, others a military 

 station. 



THE GRINNELL FIRE EXTINGUISHER. 



" A STITCH in time saves nine," and the immediate 

 ■**• application of water to a fire just beginning will 

 prevent a serious conflagration. With this in view, several 

 systems of spraying or sprinkling of water have been in- 

 troduced, but none, so far as we are aware, equal in 

 certainty and efficiency that perfected by Mr. Grinnell. As 

 in the case of many inventions connected with the ex- 

 tinguishing of fires, this one also was first brought out in 

 the United States, and the satisfactory results obtained 

 with it there led to its introduction into England and other 

 countries. It is stated that at present there are over 

 5,000 buildings in various parts of the world which are 

 under the protection of this system ; it is added, more- 

 over, that 330 fires have been successfully extinguished 

 by it. 



The system adopted is to have lines of horizontal 

 pipes, from eight to ten feet apart under the ceiling of 



