upon a sheet of paper. After insolation, I have applied this sheet of paper to another sheet covered with iodide or chloride of silver, and have then left them in contact, in the dark, for twelve hours. I then saw that the bands of red, orange, yellow and green glass, had not made any impression on the sensitive paper, while the blue, indigo, and violet bands had darkened it. I repeated this experiment upon paper or cardboard impregnated with nitrate of uranium, or tartaric acid; the sensitive layer was much more coloured in the parts corresponding to the same rays than I have indicated above. When the sheet of paper containing nitrate of uranium, or tartaric acid, has been insolated, this activity can be easily proved by pouring a solution of nitrate of silver, in form of a train, upon the insolated part. A very strong colouring is immediately seen in the blue, indigo, and violet rays, and not any in the four first, except the exposition to light has been very much prolonged. In this case a slight colouring is seen in the green, yellow, and red rays, but not any in the orange. If bands of glass are placed on a sheet of gummed paper, and it is exposed for about an hour to solar light, on pouring a solution of iodide of potassium on the part covered with the seven bands of glass, the parts of the paper corresponding to the violet, indigo, and blue rays, would be observed to take a brick-red tint, while the green, yellow, orange, and red rays would remain unchanged.

If an iodide of silver is formed by pouring on nitrate of silver before the iodide of potassium, in the dark, the iodide of silver would be coloured in the most refrangible rays. By this means a sheet of paper can be insolated under a press, and a positive proof obtained in the dark, which can be strengthened by means of sulphate of iron. I ought also to mention, that I have made experiments with coloured glasses upon white and coloured stuffs, and the stuffs and the colours were only altered by the light under the violet, indigo, and blue glasses. I should say that light has less action under a violet than a white glass, and less under the latter than in open daylight.

Couclusions.-After these experiments, it can be said that light has only a destructive action in the most refrangible rays. That is known, it will be said; but this persistent activity was not known before my experiments, and now I demonstrate that it is owing to chemical rays, and that it has the same effect as direct light in reducing salts of silver.

ARCHEOLOGIA.

IN our July number of the INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER, we gave an account of the discovery of what we believe to be the ROMAN STATION OF VINDOMIS, in the neighbourhood of Andover; and we have to add that further discoveries have since been made near the same place. The Rev. E. Kell and Mr. C. Lockhart, to whom we owe these former discoveries, believed that other remains existed in connection with them; and, on Monday, the 16th of September last, they were successful in their search. The foundations of a second Roman building were discovered in the same Castle Field, at the distance of 256 feet to the westward of the one excavated in May last. This new discovery is as yet of small extent; the four labourers employed uncovered the foundations of a wall three feet thick, composed of faced flints, for a distance of fifteen feet only; but there can be no doubt that it extended much further, and that, in fact, it forms part of some considerable building. What relation this may have to the building formerly excavated, it is impossible, with our yet imperfect knowledge, to conjecture. Among the antiquarian relics found in the course of the excavations were a Roman coin, third brass, of one of the Constantine family; numerous fragments of pottery; pieces of stone roof-flags, which showed that it was the wall of a building which had had a roof; iron nails; some oyster-shells; and bones and teeth of the ox, pig, etc. The farmer of the land, Mr. Turner, was unable to allow any complete examination of this new building to be made on the present occasion, as it was necessary to occupy the land immediately for agricultural purposes; but he has promised to allow the exploration to be continued in the autumn of 1868.

The Rev. Canon Greenwell is indefatigable in his researches among the YORKSHIRE BARROWS. He has recently opened a group of seven, in the vicinity of Weaverthorpe, on the range of hills between Malton and Filey, two of which were very remarkable for the objects found in them. They were all of low elevation, from one to three feet; but this was perhaps the mere effect of time. The first of the two alluded to was two feet high by twenty-two in diameter. A skeleton, judged to be that of a female, lay on its left side, doubled up, in the centre, on the natural surface of the ground. On the right wrist was a beautiful bronze armlet, of the snake-head pattern, and a succession of oval swellings lengthwise. Close to the neck was a delicate bronze fibula, of the bow shape, extremely elegant in workmanship. It had originally a tongue of the same metal, which had been broken off, and replaced by an iron tongue. On the chest lay a necklace of extremely beautiful beads, fifty-two of glass and seventeen of amber. The glass beads, with one exception, were blue in colour, and ornamented with a zigzag pattern in white enamel; the exceptional bead being larger and more globular, and ornamented with amulets of white. Much broken pottery was found in the mound, with a few flint-chippings. The other barrow

was only one foot high by twenty-seven feet in diameter, and in the centre lay, on the surface of the ground, a female skeleton, also doubled up and laid on her left side. The right wrist, as in the former case, was encircled by a bronze armlet. It is described as being "of the most beautiful description, resembling a delicatelyformed cog-wheel, with rounded teeth on both sides, the rim between the teeth being ornamented with three grooved lines. For exquisite preservation, delicacy and beauty of workmanship, high polish, and brilliant patina, this armlet is not to be surpassed." Below the hip were the remains of a plain urn "of a peculiar darkcoloured ware." A hole, or trench, in this tumulus, contained flint-chippings, animal bones, charcoal, and fragments of darkcoloured pottery. The rest of the barrows contained no very remarkable objects; in one only there were the fragments of a highly ornamented drinking-cup. We cannot quite see the evidence on which the writer of the local reports considers these barrows to belong to the late Celtic period, and why they are fixed at a date about one or two centuries before our era. We have given the description of the objects found in the two principal tumuli from the accounts published in the local papers, and it would be necessary to see them before forming any certain opinion; but, from the description, we should ourselves hardly judge them to be pre-Roman. In a cemetery at Seamer, in this same district, opened by Lord Londesborough in 1857, which was undoubtedly of the Anglo-Saxon period, probably of the fifth or sixth century after Christ, the body in one grave lay on its side, doubled up much as described above. An account of it has since been published in the "Journal of the Archæological Association"; and we believe that, in the only other grave opened on that occasion, in which nothing but a skeleton was found, it lay in exactly the same position.

We have just received a new proof of the archaeological activity and knowledge of Mr. Ecroyd Smith, in a pamphlet entitled, "Archæology of the Mersey District," 1866, reprinted from the "Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire," and containing much interesting matter. Perhaps the most interesting article in it is one which seems to fix the position of a ROMAN STATION which has been hitherto doubtful. It appears, from the second and tenth Iters of Antoninus, that a Roman road from Deva (Chester) entered the road which ran from Mancunium (Manchester) to Mediolanum (supposed now to be Middlewich, in the centre of Cheshire), at a spot where there stood a town or station named CONDATE. Several localities have been put forward as the site of this place, but with not very satisfactory reasons. It has now, however, been discovered, by very recent diggings for sand, that numerous Roman antiquities are found at a place named Wilderspool, near Warrington, which answers to the Condate of the Itineraries in a very satisfactory manner; and, as we understand, appears, from other circumstances, to occupy the spot where the two roads met. The works, in the course of which the Roman antiquities are brought to light, are carried on in the present year with activity which promises important results. We owe this identifica

tion to Dr. Robson, of Warrington; and Dr. Kendrick, who has watched the discoveries at Wilderspool, promises a full account of them for the next volume of Transactions of the "Historic Society."

The latter part of Mr. Ecroyd Smith's pamphlet is occupied by his report of the archæological produce of THE CHESHIRE COAST during the year 1866, in continuation of a former report, of which we have given an account before (INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER for May, 1867). Of the objects thus found, Mr. Smith has given a classed list, descriptive when necessary, with engravings of a few of the more interesting objects found. Under the head of Primeval, he enumerates twenty-one rudely-fashioned implements of flint and limestone, an arroww-head of bone, and a curious skewer, or pin, made of whalebone. To the Roman period belong four Roman coins (the only three which are legible belonging to the Emperors Nero, Antoninus Pius, and Probus); a key; a fibula of the bow shape; an acus, or pin, of a brooch; two dress pins, or (as they are usually called, perhaps in this case less correctly) hair-pins; and a piece of hæmatite, which Mr. Smith supposes to have been used as an amulet. The Saxon period is only represented in this list by two glass beads, of a pale straw colour. The objects here classed under the head of Early English, and which would perhaps be better described as Medieval, are so numerous and so varied in their material and character that we cannot attempt to enumerate them. A few relics of less interest, and dating from the reign of Elizabeth to the eighteenth century, but belonging principally to the seventeenth, are classed under the head of Later English. The total number of objects of archeological interest, irrespective of animal remains, found in or near the sea-beach of Cheshire during the year 1866, amounts to 238.

The new EXCAVATIONS AT WROXETER (Uriconium), though interrupted for a while by the necessity of employing the men in the labours of harvest, have produced some very interesting results, of which we intend to give a more full account on an early occasion. The new room opened, adjoining to what was named the enameller's shop, and, like it, facing the Roman forum, proves to be another shop, of exactly similar dimensions and character. It is singular that two large workshops, evidently for the manufacture of small ornaments in metal, should stand side by side in such a position; and we may almost suspect that Uriconium was a great manufacturing town-a Birmingham of Roman Britain. Future researches will, no doubt, throw more light on this question. Among the numerous relics recently discovered, was a pretty intaglio, engraved in a bright red cornelian, and representing two parrots, seated on what appear to be two vessels, with a large vase between them, into which what bears resemblance to a stream of liquid flows from their mouths. We regret to say that, just as this object was carried to the Museum, some visitors who happened to be there were allowed to take it in their hands to examine, that it quickly disappeared, and that nobody has heard of it since. Fortunately, impressions had been taken in wax; but it cannot but be

believed that, whoever has it in his possession, will soon see the propriety of returning it to its right place in the Shrewsbury Museum.

We would call attention to a very ingenious and probably correct suggestion made by Mr. Roach Smith, in his Notes in the last number of the "Gentleman's Magazine." Every one at all acquainted with the Roman antiquities of our island, knows how frequently large HOARDS OF ROMAN COINS are found buried in the ground. The Anglo-Saxons had remarked this circumstance, but they imagined that the Romans, when they left the island altogether, nourished the hope of coming back again, and that they buried their treasures, in the idea they would thus be preserved till their return. It is a remarkable circumstance, that nearly all these hoards contain almost the same proportions of the coins of the different emperors; that the most numerous are those of Tetricus, father and son, and that the least numerous are those of Aurelian, with whom they almost all conclude. Mr. Roach Smith compares two hoards recently discovered, one at Netly in Hampshire, the other in Yorkshire, and therefore in widely distant parts of the island. In the former, consisting in all of 1821 coins, there were 749 of Tetricus the father, 255 of Tetricus the son, and one of Aurelian; in the latter, out of a total of 3095 coins, there were 1097 of Tetricus the father, 434 of Tetricus the son, and four of Aurelian. Mr. Roach Smith conjectures, and we are quite of his opinion, that when, at that eventful period in the history of the Roman empire in the west, the legions in Britain and Gaul, who had supported the usurpation of Tetricus, were called into the latter province to oppose the advance of Aurelian, the soldiers of the legions in Britain, before their departure, buried these hoards, and that the owners never returned to reclaim them, being slaughtered probably in the great battle which restored the western provinces to the empire of Rome. A comparison of these hoards is further interesting to us, as it shows us the proportions of the coinage of the different emperors in circulation at the close of the third century. T. W.

PROGRESS OF INVENTION.

ARTIFICIAL MEERSCHAUM, ETC.-Chemistry has discovered a new and interesting use for potatoes and other vegetables, illustrations of which are now to be seen at the Paris International Exhibition. If potatoes are peeled, macerated for about thirty-six hours in water, to which eight per cent sulphuric acid has been added, well washed with water, dried in blotting-paper, and then in hot sand for several days, on plates of chalk or plaster of paris, which are changed daily, being compressed at the same time, an excellent imitation of meerchaum, answering well for the carver, or any purpose not requiring a high temperature, will be obtained. Greater hardness, whiteness, and elasticity will be produced if water containing three per cent. of