Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/23

Rh road, and would be covered with gravel or broken stones. Here the road has been decidedly only 15 feet wide. From Hutchinson, it appears that in the parish of Melmerby it is "uniformly 21 feet wide, and the road is laid with large stones so as to be difficult for horses to pass it." And in the parish of Kirkland it is said to be "in many places of the breadth of 8 yards." Can it have been wider on the south side of the Roman wall than on the north? There are several good traces in the Ash ground. It has been intersected in different places by the drains which have been lately made.

In pursuing its course over Spade Adam High Fell it also leaves some good traces in crossing the drains on the north side. The track of the way across this Fell may be distinctly seen from the Little Beacon Tower, being about 2000 yards from it. In Spade Adam Meadow also the drainers cut through it in several places, finding the bed of stones thickest where the peat moss was deepest and softest. It crosses a deep ditch, or beck, in this meadow, near a drain mouth, and shows a section of the road, on the edge of the ditch.

(2260 yards.) It passes along on the east side of Spade Adam (Speir Adam or Speir Edom) farm-house, and at 6000 yards enters a field called "The Nursery." A notion that the name may preserve the tradition of its use for rearing trees by the Romans is wholly conjectural. Cæsar, in his description of Britain, says that there is timber of every kind which is found in Gaul except beech and fir, and there are some aged beeches now standing in it. It is situated on gently rising ground with the slope facing to the south, or the full power of the mid-day sun. We have every reason to believe that the Roman soldier was not only employed in constructing military works, but was also engaged in various useful occupations, so that he became the instructor as well as the conqueror of the Britons. Nuts, acorns, and crabs, were almost all the variety of vegetable food indigenous to our island. It is said that cherries were introduced into Britain by the Romans, A.D. 55. Gibbon says, "that it would be almost impossible to enumerate all the articles, either of the animal or vegetable reign, which were successively imported into Europe from the East, and that almost all the flowers, the herbs, and the fruits that grow in our