By Rev. E. H. Goddard. 



263 



spots it much resembles " Cipolino." In the Silchester collection 

 at Reading are pieces of several such slabs, of various colours, and 

 a fragment in our Museum from the North Wraxall villa much 

 resembles the Box example. The Rev. H. H. Winwood kindly- 

 sent it up for examination to the Geological Survey Office, and 

 received the reply " We can none of us identify the source of the 

 specimen." Mr. Winwood added, " I have not a doubt in my own 

 mind that it is not an English rock." 



The Painted Wall Plaster. This was in great abundance, and 

 of a great variety of colours — which, when first exposed, were as 

 brilliant as when they were first painted. No very large pieces 

 were found. Whether there was always a very thin coat of white 

 on the plaster before the colour was applied does not appear quite 

 evident. Certainly in places the coloured borders were painted 

 over a white surface, but it was not clear whether the large masses 

 of red and yellow in the panels of the walls were painted over a 

 white ground or not. The thickness of the plaster was often as 

 much as 2in. or 2|in., and the waggon loads of gravel found at the 

 foot of the walls suggested the possibility of some of the walls 

 having been of timber and lath and plaster, rather than of stone. 

 In his previous diggings Mr. Hardy found a small very sketchily- 

 painted face in red and yellow, now in the possession of Mr. 

 Falconer ; but with this exception nothing that could be recognised 

 as part of a figure was found. A few small pieces with portions 

 of patterns or subjects on them (now in the Museum) turned up, 

 but it was evident that the general scheme of decoration was that 

 of large panels of colour, bordered and framed by lines of red, 

 green, and white. A fine Venetian red seemed the favourite colour 

 of all, though in some of the rooms a clear deep yellow formed 

 the chief ground of the walls. The chief interest in the plaster 

 painting, however, lay in the wonderful variety of imitations of 

 marble with which the panels in many of the rooms must have 

 been filled, a variety noticed by the writers in the Gentleman s 

 Magazine. Indeed Silchester itself does not seem to have produced 

 so many varieties of this kind of decoration as were found at Box. 

 VOL. xxxiii. — no. ci. s 



