384 Vegetable Soil . [July, 
toward the centre, and will have to be reset. Floors of 
rooms paved, tiled, or flagged will curve more rapidly, the 
flags often breaking up. The first office I was in, was that 
of an engineer and architect, and part of his business was 
looking after house property in Dublin, a duty I was often 
employed on. I was ordered to go and examine a first-class 
house in Upper Mount Street, occupied by a Col. R.E. It 
was not a hundred years old, as it had been built after the 
year 1798, yet the kitchen floor, which was flagged, had 
sagged at the centre over 6 inches. I found that originally 
the flags had been most carefully set on about 9 inches in 
depth of rubble, over which was a coat of mortar : no worms 
could have worked here. In stables the centre of the stall 
will nearly invariably go down, and under the pavement you 
will find gravel more or less impregnated with the ejedta of 
the cattle, which alone would prevent worm-working under 
the stones. 
In 1850 and subsequent years many of the Irish callows 
and other flooded flats were drained. Some of them; such 
as those near Strokestown, Co. Roscommon, were level be- 
fore they were drained, but after the water was taken from 
them they began to contract and show irregularities, the 
wails of crannogs standing up, while the surface inside them 
sagged down. No worms could have worked here till after 
the water was gone. It may be said that this is an excep- 
tional case, but still 1 believe it has a bearing on the subjedt, 
because in a confined space, such as a room between old 
walls, the contraction must be greater away from the walls 
than in contact with them. In a letter from Mr. Lee, of 
Caerleon, written some ten years ago, he mentions that 
Roman remains in his neighbourhood were discovered during 
a very dry summer by ridges forming on the surface of the 
ground, the contraction over the walls being less than in the 
spaces between them, although the walls were from 5 to 
6 feet from the surface. — (“ Valleys and their Relations to 
Faults, &c.,” Appendix, p. 234.) 
If a number of worms excavated under a wall, of course 
it must go down ; but would it go down evenly and regu- 
larly ? and what would the worms go there for ? Except at 
such times as the worms go down deep to hybernate, during 
dry warm or cold weather, they appear only to tunnel in 
search of food, which rarely they would find under the 
foundation of a wall ; and I suspeCt, if any of these old 
Roman walls were cleared out, their foundations would be 
found to lie on the regular floors on which they were 
originally placed. At least such has been my experience 
