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 degrees; 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 1.5 mile in compass, now surrounds a space of about 100 acres of cultivated land, on which a farm-house and a church stand. {56} 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 them. When my sons Francis and Horace visited these ruins, he accompanied them, and added his notes to theirs.
Mr. Joyce estimates that the town was inhabited by the Romans for about three centuries; and no doubt much matter must have accumulated within the walls during this long period. It appears to have been destroyed by fire, and most of the stones used in the buildings have since been carried away. These circumstances are unfavourable for ascertaining the part which worms have played in the burial of the ruins; but as careful sections of the rubbish overlying an ancient town have seldom or never before been made in England, I will give copies of the most characteristic portions of some of those made by Mr. Joyce. They are of too great length to be here introduced entire.
An east and west section, 30 ft. in length, was made across a room in the Basilica, now called the Hall of the Merchants (Fig. 9). The hard concrete floor, still covered here and there with tesserae, was found at 3 ft. beneath the surface of the field, which was here level. On the floor there were two large piles of charred wood, one alone of which is shown in the part of the section here given. This pile was covered by a thin white layer of decayed stucco or plaster, above which was a mass, presenting a singularly disturbed appearance, of broken tiles, mortar, rubbish and fine gravel, together 27 inches in thickness. Mr. Joyce believes that the gravel was used in making the mortar or concrete, which has since decayed, some of the lime probably having been dissolved. The disturbed state of the rubbish may have been due to its having been searched for building stones. This bed was capped by fine vegetable mould, 9 inches in thickness. From these facts we may conclude that the Hall was burnt down, and that much rubbish fell on the floor, through and from which the worms slowly brought up the mould, now forming the surface of the level field.
A section across the middle of another hall in the Basilica, 32 feet 6 inches in length, called the AErarium, is shown in Fig. 10. It appears that we have here evidence of two fires, separated by an interval of time, during which the 6 inches of "mortar and concrete with broken tiles" was accumulated. Beneath 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 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 here only 9 inches thick. In some other sections, not copied, we likewise have evidence of buildings having been erected over the ruins of older ones.