on the floor, over which some earth had by this means been deposited, and
here grass now grew.
_Brading_, _Isle of Wight_. A fine Roman villa was discovered here in
1880; and by the end of October no less than 18 chambers had been more or
less cleared. A coin dated 337 A.D. was found. My son William visited
the place before the excavations were completed; and he informs me that
most of the floors were at first covered with much rubbish and fallen
stones, having their interstices completely filled up with mould,
abounding, as the workmen said, with worms, above which there was mould
without any stones. The whole mass was in most places from 3 to above 4
ft. in thickness. In one very large room the overlying earth was only 2
ft. 6 in. thick; and after this had been removed, so many castings were
thrown up between the tiles that the surface had to be almost daily
swept. Most of the floors were fairly level. The tops of the
broken-down walls were covered in some places by only 4 or 5 inches of
soil, so that they were occasionally struck by the plough, but in other
places they were covered by from 13 to 18 inches of soil. It is not
probable that these walls could have been undermined by worms and
subsided, as they rested on a foundation of very hard red sand, into
which worms could hardly burrow. The mortar, however, between the stones
of the walls of a hypocaust was found by my son to have been penetrated
by many worm-burrows. The remains of this villa stand on land which
slopes at an angle of about 3 ; and the land appears to have been long
cultivated. Therefore no doubt a considerable quantity of fine earth has
been washed down from the upper parts of the field, and has largely aided
in the burial of these remains.
_Silchester_, _Hampshire_. The ruins of this small Roman town have been
better preserved than any other remains of the kind in England. A broken
wall, in most parts from 15 to 18 feet in height and about 11 2 mile in
compass, now surrounds a space of about 100 acres of cultivated land, on
which a farm-house and a church stand. {187} Formerly, when the weather
was dry, the lines of the buried walls could be traced by the appearance
of the crops; and recently very extensive excavations have been
undertaken by the Duke of Wellington, under the superintendence of the
late Rev. J. G. Joyce, by which means many large buildings have been
discovered. Mr. Joyce made careful coloured sections, and measured the
thickness of each bed of rubbish, whilst the excavations were in
progress; and he has had the kindness to send me copies of several of
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