38 On Roman Remains found at Holhiry, near Dean. 



table. An olla of small size, and some drinking cups of the whiter 

 paste, some partially broken pocula of the red ware, with bands of 

 slight tool- work upon them, portions of an elegantly shaped jug, 

 and an oil flask, entire, with the exception of its handle, the two 

 last-named vessels, ornamented with white, are the most interesting 

 specimens I have to lay before you. 



But the bulk of the pottery exhumed was of the harder stronger 

 ware to which I have referred, and consisted mainly of bases, lips 

 and broken pieces of hundreds of drinking cups, ranging in size 

 from the cyathus, or twelfth part of a pint, to the sextarius, or full 

 measure ; the intermediate vessels were called sextantes, quadrantes, 

 &c, according to the number of cyathi they contained. There were 

 portions also, but no perfect examples, of larger jars and wide- 

 mouthed bottles. Of the pocula many have the well-known thumb 

 indentations : there is a fragment with circular ones, made perhaps 

 by turning the cushion of the thumb round in the clay : others 

 have rude attempts at ornamentation, by rough tooling and lines, 

 or by dots and streakings of white ; but all are of a low class of art. 

 Two only, both of them broken, pretend to something beyond, one 

 having impressed roundels worked upon it, and the other a slight 

 flowing pattern, laid on in cream-coloured pipeclay. I have suc- 

 ceeded in putting together sufficient fragments of a larger jar or 

 bottle, to show the effect of the more elaborate roundels which 

 adorned it ; and I have portions, which I cannot unite, of a jug; 

 which was decorated with diamonds formed by the intersection of 

 double lines of white. Besides these there are sundry small pieces 

 of other cups or vessels of unknown shape, one of which was orna- 

 mented with delicate lathe-wrought tooling, another with an em- 

 bossed pattern^ a third with Overlapping scales, laid on like tiles 

 upon a roof. A perfect poculum of this description, found at Caistor 

 in Northamptonshire, is figured in Chaffer's " Marks and Monograms 

 on Pottery and Porcelain/'' page 16. And here are necks of two 

 small bottles, one of them with a pattern of intersecting circles, 

 the other with a ring of white dots upon it. 



Of the lustrous red ware known as " Saiman," very little was 

 found ; the largest fragment being a portion of a shallow vessel 



