Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/284

This page has been validated.
256
HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING.

by the side of the ancient trackway, leading through the British to the Roman camp, the remains of which are still discernible. Being so near the surface of the soil, which is there very thin, and overlying the rock, the iron is very much corroded, but the form of the shoe, which is identical with the other two, is perfect. It is narrower, longer, and heavier than the two specimens just described, and the three nail-heads of one side are yet in the shoe. They project nearly as high as the calkins, and are of the shape always observed with these shoes. Its small size, and staple-like form, caused it to be designated a 'mule shoe.'

A very interesting discovery of a Roman villa has been recently made at Chedworth, a place on the great Foss Road, sixteen miles from Gloucester. With a very fine tesselated pavement, have been found a great number of articles, such as a silver spoon; two silver coins, on the obverse of which are the words 'Imperator Cæsar Antoninus Augustus;' a coin of Heliogabalus, and another of Valens; bronze fibulæ; rings; implements; bone hair-pins; bronze coins of Constantia, Constantinus, Urbs Roma, &c.; nails, armlets, twisted chains with swivels; styles, and steelyards with lead weights; iron implements, knives, chisels, spear-heads, crooks to suspend a kettle, and three pigs of iron. The presence of the latter articles would tend to show that they had been manufactured on the spot. There were also various kinds of pottery; bones of the horse, ox, sheep, and pig, and antlers of a large herd of deer, as well as two fragments of human skulls. There are proofs that the villa has been destroyed by fire, and 275 coins, mostly Roman, fix the date; no