ICS 



Calne. 



bottom of very ancient oceans, there is among the rest an ancient 

 coral reef, visible at the surface at various places, from Westbury, 

 by Steeple Ashton, Seend, Spye Park, Bowood, Calne, Quemerford, 

 Hilmarton, and away to High worth. At Steeple Ashton there is 

 a field where almost every stone on the surface is a coral : and pieces 

 are found sometimes so perfect that when laid alongside specimens 

 of coral rock now forming in the West Indies it is hardly possible 

 to distinguish one from the other. Calne has supplied our museums 

 with many beautiful relics of the ancient world. The one perhaps 

 best known is the marine shell called the echinus, an extremely 

 pretty fossil of exquisite design, sometimes found lying in a mass of 

 thirteen or fourteen together, just as they were lying at the bottom of 

 the sea when some change happened to cover them over. Mr. W. 

 Cunnington, our Wiltshire geologist, has kindly lent me two newly- 

 discovered corals of a very peculiar structure, which requires a 

 microscope for examination, and the merits of which can only be 

 understood by those who have made these matters a special study. 

 It is enough to say that the two specimens of fossil coral now on 

 the table, though in one sense so new that geologists have not yet 

 assigned a name for them, are, nevertheless, in themselves of an age 

 so remote that your old camps and Wansdykes are, comparatively 

 speaking, things of yesterday. 



So much for the underground history. As to what is visible on 

 the surface, it is only after much dry research, and with the help of 

 a good deal of supposition and guess-work, that we arrive at anything 

 like a probable conclusion as to the time when, and the people by 

 whom, our old earthworks were thrown up. Objections there are, 

 of course, to every theory, and it seems hopeless to find one that 

 shall be accepted by everybody. As to Wansdyke, it is the opinion 

 of many persons that it was not constructed for military defence (for 

 which it seems inadequate), but was a grand boundary line, about 

 which there should be no mistake, between two ancient provinces. 

 The camps seem to speak for themselves, as fortresses and places of 

 refuge when the country was disturbed, when life and property were 

 not so safe and pleasant at Calne and Cherhill as they are now ; but 

 by whom and at what time first constructed who will venture to say ? 



