Arcliceologia. 71 



that in former times wine was commonly made in England. The 

 subjects of the other papers are all Roman. There was a town in 

 ancient Egypt named Babylon, which is pretended to have been 

 founded by Babylonian captives, but it was fortified by the Romans, 

 and made the head-quarters of one of the legions. It became in the 

 middle ages the capital of the Egyptian khalifs, and a place of great 

 commercial importance, and has been sometimes confounded with 

 the more celebrated Babylon in Assyria. Its site is commonly 

 called Old Cairo, and is remarkable for the fine remains of Roman 

 building which are still seen there. These are here represented in 

 some spirited etchings by Mr. Fairholt, from drawings made by 

 him on a recent visit. Another paper describes the Roman villa 

 recently discovered at Carisbrooke, in the Isle of "Wight, with views 

 and plans, and an engraving of the very elegant tesselated pave- 

 ment which formed the floor of one of the rooms ; and in another, 

 Mr. Roach Smith has brought before the notice of antiquaries a 

 new class of antiquities, Roman leaden seals, which have been 

 found in rather considerable quantities on the site of the Roman 

 Vertera, at Brough-upon-Stanmore, in Westmoreland. If found 

 elsewhere, they are excessively rare, and it is very difficult to say 

 what was their particular use, except that they have many of them 

 holes which were evidently designed for attaching them to some 

 object which they were intended to authenticate. Perhaps ther^ 

 may have been here an official depot for such objects, where th, 

 seals were taken off. Many of them have inscriptions, some con- 

 taining the name and number of a military legion or cohort, and 

 others apparently the names of individuals. Some of them have 

 figures resembling those found on coins and gems. The only con- 

 tribution to our archaeological knowledge in this number of the 

 Collectanea which remains to be noticed, consists of two plates 

 of rare coins of the Emperor Carausius, which are supplementary to 

 an article on the same subject given in a preceding volume. We 

 need hardly point oat the great interest the coins of this usurper 

 have for the history of Roman Britain. 



The excavations at Silchester, on the site of the Roman city of 

 Calleva, carried on at the expense of the Duke of Wellington, the 

 lord of the soil, have not, as far as our last information goes, pro- 

 duced any very interesting results, beyond the discovery of the 

 foundations of houses and floors. The latter, though belonging to 

 rather large rooms, appear, as far as they have been hitherto un- 

 covered, to have belonged to houses of a class not very highly deco- 

 rated. The greater number were paved merely with the common 

 red tessellse, but in some the pavement was formed of white and red 

 tessellaa alternately, and one only had a richer tesselated pavement, 

 with a central ornament, which had been nearly destroyed at 

 some former period, radiating from which were found portions of 

 white tessellse, forming a stellated pattern. The coins found are 

 few, and only of common types, including examples of Gratian, 

 Constantine, Allectus, and Carausius. 



Interesting discoveries have recently been made on the site of a 

 Roman settlement at Southfleet, in Kent, supposed to belong to 



