42 
W. HANSOM—BRITISH AND ROMAN 
was also found ; and there were many nails and spikes, a key, 
knives, horse-shoes, some pieces of bronze, and Colchester or prob¬ 
ably Richboro’ oyster-shells, the contents of which formed a favourite 
dish with the Romans. In reference to their appreciation of mol- 
lusks and crustaceans, Juvenal, in his Fourth Satire, writes of 
Montanus, a court sycophant, much addicted to the pleasures of 
the table, that he knew how to discern at the first bite whether 
an oyster had its birth-place at Circeii or on the Lucrine rocks, or 
whether it was a native of the Ray of Richborough, and at sight 
of a crab could tell at once what shore it came from. 
We also came upon fragments of Roman glass, pieces of querns 
or millstones, and volcanic lava. This last I believe to have been 
used along with the ordinary clay of the district in making common 
earthen vessels. Analyses of pottery from Pompeii and Rome show 
it to contain volcanic earth, and favour this suggestion. Hones 
for sharpening knives, etc., stone weights, and cores from the 
horns of oxen, believed to he those of the extinct Bob longifrons , 
of which the black Welsh cattle are supposed to be descendants, 
hones of horses, sheep, and hogs, a large number of knuckle-bones 
which were used as dice, a quantity of Roman bricks and roofing- 
tiles of the usual red colour, and some Roman coins, were dug out; 
these were much defaced by the action of the soil, and their in¬ 
scriptions rendered illegible. Many coins have been picked up at 
various times in this field, dating from Vespasian, a.d. 69, to 
Julianus, a.d. 360, almost continuously. The following is a list 
of these coins :— 
a.d. a.d. 
Vespasian . 69-79 Tetricus. 267 
Nerva . 96-98 Tetricus, Jun. 267-272 
2 Antoninus Pius.. 138-161 Allectus ..... 293-296 
Marcus Aurelius . 161-180 2 Constantine . 306-337 
Postumus . 258 Crispus. 317-326 
2 Gallienus . 253-268 Constantinus II. . 337-340 
Salonina, wife of Gallienus. Julianus . 360-363 
We next dug in a pasture separated from the other field by a 
lane. In the south-west corner is a double mound ; this we opened, 
hut found nothing more than broken dark pottery and a quantity 
of burnt earth on a surface which had been beaten down hard. 
Possibly some sacrifice had been offered there, and the mound four 
feet in height raised over it. In various parts of this field were 
lines of stone, about 2ft. deep, running at right angles to one 
another, probably the foundations of a house, or other buildings, 
but no mortar was present; this may have perished by the dis¬ 
solving away of the lime constituent. Fragments of pottery and 
Samian w 7 are were turned up in almost every part of the quad¬ 
rangular enclosure, which can be distinctly traced from the raised 
ground and trenches encircling it, measuring about 20 acres. 
Mr. Seebohm, in his book, ‘ The English Village Community,’ 
thus describes this little Roman holding:—“It consists now of 
several fields, forming a rough square, with its sides to the four 
points of the compass, and contains, filling in the corners of the 
