234 SI LCH ESTER. are those sandstones called grej wethers, or sarsen stones, which Dr. Buckland supposed to be " the wreck of the harder portion of the sandy strata of the contiguous London and New Forest basins.^ These stones appear to have been used pretty freely in the formation of the wall of Silchester, together with oolitic rocks, probably from the north-west of Oxford. As these large flints are uncommon about the fields in the neighbourhood, it is not to be wondered at that, when a plough comes in contact with a bed of them, however narrow, it should be noticed ; and indeed, when there are so few building stones in the immediate neighbourhood, it would not be remarkable if they were sought after and dug up whenever the plough touched on them. From examination of places near Sil- chester where these flints have been found, which generally are about two feet below the present surface, and further westward on the chalk, where the line has not sunk so much, or become covered by deposition, there is reason to think that the line was never raised to a great height above the surface, and that the fall was the same on each side of the road. The most easily recognised hue of Roman way is that known as the Devil's Causeway at Bagshot Heath ; it passes about 200 yards on the north of Finchamstead church, crosses near Thatcher's Ford (where it is the south boundary of an isolated part of the county of Wilts), and seems, under the present name of Park Lane, to have originally given name to Turgis, Saye, and Mortimer, Stratfield^ Having come from the eastward, with a direction due west, where it arrives at the cross road (at the west end of Park Lane), it makes the smallest possible bend, one scarcely perceptible, and runs the last mile and three quarters due west into the east gate of Silchester. 7 Trans. Geo. Soc, No. 12, p. 126. them extremity of the park, and passes | This paper was an important step in through a ford near the junction of tlie i advance of the geological knowledge of Blackwater and Whitewater rivers, about j the day when it was written. (Read Feb. 8, two miles from the place where the united 1825.) streams fall into the Loddon ; but the !
- " The road issues from the town at traces of its course are much interrupted
the eastern gate, where the present church by cultivation till we come to West Court of Silchester is situated, and proceeds in House, the seat of the Rev. H.E.St. John, a rectilinear direction through Strathfield- built, according to tradition, upon the road saye, along what is now called Park Lane, itself, the direction of which is marked by which is scarcely passable in the winter the avenue to the mansion." (United Ser- season. The line of its direction crosses vice Journal, Jan. 1836: Part 1, p. 39.) | the Loddon, near the bridge, at the nor- i
