ORDER, CYPERACEA.-Eleocharis palustris, Creeping Spikerush; Coleshill Pool, Pebble Mill Pool, and the stream near Vaughton's Hole. Scirpus sylvaticus, Wood Clubrush; side of the brook nearly opposite Avern's mill, Edgbaston Lane. Eriophorum angustifolium, Narrow-leaved Cotton-grass; Coleshill Bog. -(C. III., Linn.)-Carex stellulata, Prickly Sedge; Coleshill Bog. C. panicea, Pink-leaved Sedge; same habitat.-(C. XXI., Linn.)

ORDER, GRAMINACEE.-Nardus stricta, Common Matgrass; Sutton Coldfield, a little beyond the new Catholic College.— (C. III., Linn.)

DIVISION II.-CELLULARES.

CLASS III.-ACOTYLEDONES, OR CRYPTOGAMÆ.

ORDER, FILICACEE.-Aspidium lobatum, Close-leaved Shieldfern; a bank at Saltley. A. spinulosum, Prickly-toothed Shieldfern; a shady bank in Garrison Lane, opposite the row of Poplars. Asplenium ruta-muraria, Wall Spleenwort; an old wall at Sandwell Park; Aston Park wall, side next the lane leading to Witton. Blechnum boreale, Northern Hardfern; Moseley Common, near the new road; Coleshill Bog.-(C. XXIV., Linn.)

In this list I have probably inserted the names of some plants which may be considered common, while, on the other hand, I have omitted others of more rare occurrence. This must unavoidably happen: plants which are scarce in one locality are very often common in another, and to decide in all cases when a plant may be deemed rare, and when common, is no easy matter. I have purposely admitted a few which are by no means generally rare, though, from local circumstances, they happen not frequently to be met with around Birmingham-such as Nuphar lutea and Anemone nemorosa -merely for the direction of young collectors, whose botanical rambles may be circumscribed to the immediate neighbourhood. Limited as the collection was to the observations of one summer, it can excite no wonder that this selection is not more extensive ; many plants were not in bloom when I happened to visit their localities, and I hope, by future additions, to make it much more extensive.

It possesses one merit, however, which a botanist will not consider a trivial one: not one plant is inserted on "hearsay;” every specimen was collected from the station where it grew by myself.

Birmingham, Dec. 21, 1836.

W. ICK.

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES DISCOVERED IN

WORCESTERSHIRE.

BY JABEZ ALLIES, ESQ.

SINCE my paper on Roman antiquities, &c., discovered in the city and county of Worcester (an abridged account of which appeared in vol. iv., p. 85, of The Analyst), further discoveries have been made at the Kempsey Gravel Pit,* where five or six more cists for burial by cremation have been found, and which were roofed with clay and broken pebbles. One of them was of an oval shape, near three yards long, two yards broad, and about five feet deep in the gravel. The others were smaller and not quite so deep. Some of the latter merely contained black ashes; others contained ashes and fragments of red-earth pottery, made in the Roman mode (the mouth of one of the urns is twenty-eight inches in circumference) and the greatest cist contained black ashes and a large broken pan of coarse materials like those made by the ancient Britisht, and judging from a segment of the pan, it was three feet in circumference. Out of this cist there was a passage into a smaller one. A fragment found in one of the cists has a small handle situated at the shoulder part of it, the bow of which is only large enough to admit the little finger, and the side of the fragment is partly indented for the purpose.

As great alterations are occasionally made at the site of the abovementioned Roman camp, I will endeavour to give an account of it from its present relics; fearing that, in a few more years, almost every vestige of it will have past away.

The west vallum lay on the ridge of ground, or precipice, skirting the flat on the east side of the Severn. The north end of it commenced at the back of the garden belonging to the Parsonage Farm-house, and ran in a line from thence to within about 15 yards

• This gravel-pit, the property of Joseph Smith, Esq., is situated in a ploughed field, called the Moors, on the ridge or precipice of ground, out of floods way, which skirts the flat on the east side of the river Severn, and lies between that river and the village of Kempsey, near the northern side of a vallum, which by many writers is described as a Roman camp, and within the site of the southern end of which camp, Kempsey church stands.

In my previous account, I suggested that there formerly might have been a tumulus over the cists at Kempsey; but that only applied to those cists which I considered were ancient British or Romanized British cists, and not to those which were purely Roman.

of the south-west corner of Kempsey church-yard, where it bowed round into such corner. Judging from a measure lately made by footsteps, this vallum was about 200 yards long.

The south vallum appears to have run along the south side of the church-yard, and was about 90 yards long.

The east vallum ran along the east side of the church-yard, and other property, and through the garden of Gore Cottage into the orchard behind, and was about 200 yards long.

The north vallum ran from the above-mentioned orchard to the north-west corner of the garden of the Parsonage Farm-house (from whence we set out), and was 180 yards long, or thereabouts. The rounded corner, and such other part of it as lies in Gore Cottage orchard and garden, is still very perfect, and measures 26 yards across; but as it is a mound of gravel, I fear it will ere long share the fate of the rest of this northern vallum, which within these few years has been levelled by the parochial authorities for road materials.*

The Roman coin which I referred to in my previous paper, as having been found in the gravel-bed at Kempsey, is since ascertained to be one of Nero; and the previously undeciphered one, found at Powick, is a Claudius Gothicus. Some of those found in Britannia-square, Worcester, in the foundation of the supposed circular tower or fort, are of Decentius, Magnentius, and Claudius Gothicus. The others discovered there are principally of the Constantine family as before described.† It is worthy of remark, that the above foundation was of new red sandstone, like that in the quarries at Ombersley or Holt, and such stone was most probably brought by the Romans down the river from one or other of those places: in corroboration of this I lately received a letter from Dr. Prattinton of Bewdley, wherein he says that, some years ago, he found several specimens of Roman pottery of the finest sort in the parish of Ombersley, and had the sanction of his late excellent friend, the discoverer of the extensive villa at North Leigh, in Oxfordshire, as to the probability, if not certainty, of there having been a Roman residence in the neighbourhood.

Since I wrote the above, the rounded corner which lies in the abové garden has been partly, and will soon be completely, demolished.

+ Britannia-square lies upon the ridge of ground, out of floods way, exactly opposite Cinder Point, on the east bank of the Severn, where a Roman foot-blast for smelting iron-ore is supposed to have been situated, as described in my former paper, under the head Yarranton. Although the finding of Roman coins in a particular locality is not sufficient proof of its having been a Roman station, yet when we consider all the corroborative facts in the above case, the evidence appears to amount almost to a demonstration.

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I have Roman coins of Probus and Gratian, and also an undeciphered one, which are said to have been lately found in an excavated mass of soil upon which some old tenements stood, in a street called Dolday, in this city. In The Stranger's Guide to Worcester, by Ambrose Florence, p. 13, the above ancient part of the town is noticed as follows." In the corporation book, called Liber Legum, made in the reign of Henry VII., it is ordered that all Walshe catell' coming to be sold, be brought to Dolday."

Camden, in his Britannia, vol. ii., p. 352, edit. 1790,* says"Worcester was probably founded by the Romans, when they built cities at proper intervals on the east side of the Severn, to check the Britons on the other side of that river. It formerly boasted Roman walls. It has now a tolerably strong wall."

In Britton's History and Antiquities of Worcester Cathedral, published in 1835, it is stated that "Dr. Stukeley, who appears to have visited the city and several other places in this part of England, in 1721, and afterwards published an account of his antiquarian researches in his Itinerarium curiosum, says no doubt but this was a Roman city, yet we could find no remains but a place in it called Sudbury, which seems to retain in its name some memorial of that sort." "+ To this Mr. Britton added-"This place is now called Sidbury-evidently a corruption of South-bury or borough. Since Camden, Stukeley, and Green wrote their respec

Vide, also, Andrew Yarranton's Work, intitled, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, &c., (the first part of which was published in 1677, and the second in 1698), and Chambers's Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire, title, Yarrington.

+ Bishop Lyttleton was also of that opinion. Dr. Nash, in the absence of the late discoveries, raised considerable doubts, in his History of Worcestershire, as to Worcester having been a Roman station, as he did not think Yarranton's account was sufficiently conclusive.

Upon a culvert, a few years back, having been made about thirty or forty yards long in Sidbury street, just outside where the city-gate stood, a pebble pavement was found all along the line, about six feet deep in the earth. The like was also discovered in the adjoining lane leading out of Sidbury, by the back of St. Peter's church, to the china factory; but I should think this pavement was not Roman, but of a more modern date, and buried, perhaps, at the time of one of the conflagrations of this city, for the ground in that quarter has been considerably raised since the above church was built, as the steps down into that ancient edifice sufficiently indicate. It was at the above spot in Sidbury where Charles II. escaped from the Cromwellites, aided by a waggon, which crossed the gate-way, and which was laden with ammunition, according to Dr. Bates's account in his Troubles of England, and with hay, according to the History of Dr. Nash.

tive works, a vast mound of earth-the keep of the ancient Norman castle on the south side of the cathedral-has been entirely taken away; and some Roman antiquities were found, in 1833, at or near its base: viz., an urn or jug of red earth with a handle; coins of Vespasian, Caligula, Nero, Tiberius, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, &c.; and in a field near Upper Deal was discovered another Roman urn, containing twenty copper coins of Carausius."

"The real extent of the ancient castle cannot now be ascertained, but the lofty mound, called the keep, and its ditches, &c., occupied an area of between three and four acres. The apex of the keep mound measured more than eighty feet above the high-water mark of the Severn, which flowed close to its western base."

In addition to the above-mentioned discoveries of remains at the Castle-hill, I have to observe that a workman some time ago brought me a small fragment, which, from its weight, he fancied was gold. He stated that he dug it out of the gravel, near the centre of the bottom of the above hill, during its demolition. I submitted this substance to an experienced Chemist, who, upon analization, found it to be exactly the same in quality as what is called "patent yellow," the mode of making which is set forth in Mr. Gray's work on Pharmacology. Now, if the Castle-hill really was thrown up by the Romans, and the workman's above account was true, it may reasonably be inferred that the paint in question was of Roman manufacture; but it has been surmised that the above hill, or the greater part of it, was made of the earth which was excavated upon the laying of the foundations and crypt of the cathedral.

With respect to that splendid and probably ancient British tumulus, called Cruckbarrow-hill, which is situated between two and three miles eastward of Worcester, it is very likely that the Romans used it as a watch or signal station, in the line of the Old Hills and Malvern Hill, on the south-west, and of the Storage, Suckley, Ankerdine, Berrow, Woodbury, and Abberley Hills on the west and north-west. This hill is of an oval shape, and measures 512 yards round within the ring fence at the base, and about 180 yards round the crown. I take it this was partly a natural hill, and that it had a tail lying eastward, which was pared down to

That part of the Suckley chain, called the Round Hill in Alfrick, has a very tumulus-like appearance: the whole of the above range is rather minutely described in my pamphlet On certain curious Indentations in the Old Red Sandstone of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, &c. &c., published in 1835.