CHAPTER IV.
THE PART WHICH WORMS HAVE PLAYED IN THE BURIAL OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS.
The accumulation of rubbish on the sites of great cities independent of
the action of worms The burial of a Roman villa at Abinger The floors and
walls penetrated by worms Subsidence of a modern pavement The buried
pavement at Beaulieu Abbey Roman villas at Chedworth and Brading The
remains of the Roman town at Silchester The nature of the debris by which
the remains are covered The penetration of the tesselated floors and
walls by worms Subsidence of the floors Thickness of the mould The old
Roman city of Wroxeter Thickness of the mould Depth of the foundations of
some of the Buildings Conclusion.
ARCH OLOGISTS are probably not aware how much they owe to worms for the
preservation of many ancient objects. Coins, gold ornaments, stone
implements, &c., if dropped on the surface of the ground, will infallibly
be buried by the castings of worms in a few years, and will thus be
safely preserved, until the land at some future time is turned up. For
instance, many years ago a grass-field was ploughed on the northern side
of the Severn, not far from Shrewsbury; and a surprising number of iron
arrow-heads were found at the bottom of the furrows, which, as Mr.
Blakeway, a local antiquary, believed, were relics of the battle of
Shrewsbury in the year 1403, and no doubt had been originally left
strewed on the battle-field. In the present chapter I shall show that
not only implements, &c., are thus preserved, but that the floors and the
remains of many ancient buildings in England have been buried so
effectually, in large part through the action of worms, that they have
been discovered in recent times solely through various accidents. The
enormous beds of rubbish, several yards in thickness, which underlie many
cities, such as Rome, Paris, and London, the lower ones being of great
antiquity, are not here referred to, as they have not been in any way
acted on by worms. When we consider how much matter is daily brought
into a great city for building, fuel, clothing and food, and that in old
times when the roads were bad and the work of the scavenger was
neglected, a comparatively small amount was carried away, we may agree
78