If he chooses to measure it he will find it exactly sixty feet wide, divided into three lands, resembling those in a ploughed field. The centre land thirty-six feet, and raised from one to three, according to the nature of the ground. The side lands, twelve each, and rising seldom more than one foot. This centre land no doubt was appropriated for the march of the troops, and the small one, on each side, for the out-guards, who preserved their ranks, for fear of a surprize from the vigilant and angry Britons. The Romans held these roads in great esteem, and were severe in their laws for their preservation. This famous road is visible all the way, but in some parts greatly hurt, and in others, compleat as in the first day the Romans made it. Perhaps the inquisitive traveller may find here, the only monument in the whole island left us by the Romans, that _time_ hath not injured. The philosophical traveller may make some curious observations in the line of agriculture, yet in its infancy. The only growth upon this wild, is gorse and ling: The vegetation upon the road and the adjacent lands, seem equal: The pits are all covered with a tolerable turf. As this road has been made about 1720 years, and, as at the time of making, both that and the pits must have been surfaces of neat gravel; he will be led to examine, what degree of soil they have acquired in that long course of years, and by what means? He well knows, that the surface of the earth is very far from being a fixed body: That there is a continual motion in every part, stone excepted: That the operations of the sun, the air, the frost, the dews, the winds, and the rain, produce a constant agitation, which changes the particles and the pores, tends to promote vegetation, and to increase the soil to a certain depth. This progress is too minute for the human eye, but the effects are visible. The powers above mentioned operate nearly as yeast in a lump of dough, that enlivens the whole. Nature seems to wish that the foot would leave the path, that she may cover it with grass. He will find this vegetative power so strong, that it even attends the small detached parts of the soil where-ever they go, provided they are within reach of air and moisture: He will not only observe it in the small pots, appropriated for garden use, but on the tops of houses, remote from any road, where the wind has carried any small dust. He will also observe it in cracks of the rocks; but in an amazing degree in the thick walls of ruined castles, where, by a long course of time, the decayed materials are converted into a kind of soil, and so well covered with grass, that if one of our old castle builders could return to his possessions, he might mow his house as well as his field, and procure a tolerable crop from both.