OOEBESPONDENCE. 



213 



of " clay ashes " as arc soen in the " staddles " or " straddles," where 

 bricks are burnt in the present day in the marsh. I never myself, how- 

 ever, could discern a single piece of charred wood, however minute, or of 

 coal, or any cinders, or any indication of vegetable matter acted upon by 

 fire. I have an idea that the fuel used may have been straw or dried 

 grass. Nothing was turned up of the nature of metal, coins, or tools ; 

 there were several drop-like pieces of a dark blue, almost black, glaze, 

 transparent ; the tooth of ahorse ; one of the tarsal bones of an ox or cow ; 

 two or three imperfect bones, probably of sheep ; the remains of hazel- 

 trees and willows, on the same level as the bricks : also, on the same level, 

 cockle-shells, as though in their native bed ; single oyster-shells ; and, in 

 one place, land-snail shells, as fresh and brilliant in colour as any now in a 

 hedgerow. 



In some few cases the hand-bricks are vitrified and hard ; those that 

 are not (constituting the great bulk of what I turned up) vary in colour 

 from a light yellow-red to a dark black-red, and all seem more or less to 

 have chopped grass or hay mixed with them. They vary in size ; the 

 smaller are near to Orby, the larger to the seacoast ; the small ones are 

 very friable and easily crumble. Flat pieces of pot-like floor-tiling exist, 

 bearing the impress of grass on both sides, and seem to have formed a 

 floor on which the props rested to support the pottery. Many of the 

 bricks show a flat surface at one end, whilst the other end, that rested 

 against the pot, is slightly hollow ; there are other pieces of pot, of the 

 use of which I could form no opinion. These relics of the Eomans lie at 

 very little more than a foot below the surface in Orby, at the point most 

 distant from the sea ; at other places they are three, four, five, six, and 

 even close upon seven feet under the present marsh-level. 



The superincumbent warp forms the rich marsh-grazing district of 

 Lincolnshire. When examined, it can be split up into flakes, indicative of 

 its being a tidal deposit, exactly like the warp left by the Trent and Ouse 

 (Yorkshire) in the present day. I did not see a single freshwater or 

 marine shell in the body of the warp ; but when it is pierced through, a well- 

 defined surface is reached having sea-shells upon it, and this surface was 

 doubtless the Roman level. 



I do not possess sufficient geological lore to reason firmly on the fact I 

 have next to state; but the professed geologist will perhaps at once ex- 

 plain my difficulty. The first digging I ever made was in a field in Orby, 

 the property of Mr. Stainton, of Dolby, called "the far ten acre." At 

 about four feet we reached the bed of hand-bricks and debris, which were 

 found to rest on a fine blue, plastic, saponaccous-like clay, into which a 

 pole was thrust for three or four feot with ease. This clay must certainly 

 have been the level of the district in the time of thcliomans, for the hand- 

 bricks lie upon it; it must, therefore, have been deposited before the 

 Eomans came to England, at all events before they made pottery on its 

 surface, and very possibly out of its substance. If this clay is a sea 

 deposit, which T lake it to be, how comes it that the sea deposited a ///»<• 

 clay before the Romans came to Lincolnshire; and after they had left this 

 country, when the banks gave way and the sea again submerged the 

 Roman level, a i/< //o/r-hro/cn warp, a very widely different substance from 

 the blue clay, was left behind bythevery same sea P Can any supposition 



of the blue clay being a freshwater deposil clear this up? Any such sup. 

 position appears to mc to militate againsl the received, ami 1 think the 

 true idea, that the sea (not fresh water) once covered the Roman level, 

 and that it w as the sea, and not fresh water, that was embanked out by 

 the Romans. 



