fires, separated by an interval of time, during which the 6 inches of "mortar and concrete

Section within a hall in the Basilica at Silchester. Scale

32

Charred wood, 10 inches thick.

Mortar with broken tiles, 6
inches thick.

Charred wood, 2 inches thick.

Rubble, 6 inches thick.

Undisturbed gravel.

Be

with broken tiles" was accumulated. neath one of the layers of charred wood, a valuable relic, a bronze eagle, was found: and this shows that the soldiers must have deserted the place in a panic. Owing to the death of Mr. Joyce, I have not been able to ascertain beneath which of the two layers the eagle was found. The bed of rubble overlying the undisturbed gravel originally formed, as I suppose, the floor, for it stands on a level with that of a corridor, outside the walls of the Hall; but the corridor is not shown in the section as here given. The vegetable mould was 16 inches thick in the thickest part; and the depth from the surface of the field, clothed with herbage, to the undisturbed gravel, was 40 inches.

The section shown in Fig. 11 represents an excavation made in the middle of the town, and is here introduced because the bed of "rich "mould" attained, according to Mr. Joyce, the unusual thickness of 20 inches. Gravel lay at the depth of 48 inches from the surface, but it was not ascertained whether this was in its natural state, or had been brought here and had been rammed down, as occurs in some other places.

The section shown in Fig. 12 was taken in the centre of the Basilica, and though it was 5 feet in depth, the natural sub-soil was not

Silchester.

reached. The bed marked "concrete was

probably at one time a floor; and the beds beneath seem to be the remnants of more ancient buildings. The vegetable mould was

Section in the centre of the Basilica at Silchester.

evidence of buildings having been erected over the ruins of older ones. In one case

there was a layer of yellow clay of very unequal thickness between two beds of débris, the lower one of which rested on a floor with tesseræ. The old broken walls appear sometimes to have been roughly cut down to a uniform level, so as to serve as the foundations of a temporary building; and Mr. Joyce suspects that some of these buildings were wattled sheds, plastered with clay, which would account for the above-mentioned layer of clay.

Turning now to the points which more immediately concern us. Worm-castings were observed on the floors of several of the rooms, in one of which the tesselation was unusually perfect. The tesser here consisted of little cubes of hard sandstone of about 1 inch, several of which were loose or projected slightly above the general level. One or occasionally two open worm-burrows were found beneath all the loose tesseræ. Worms have also penetrated the old walls of these ruins. A wall, which had just been exposed to view during the excavations then in progress, was examined: it was built of large flints, and was 18 inches in thickness.