(p. 35.) Puticoli. Slave pits have been found in South Africa. "When the old town hall and town prison at Nottingham was demolished a few years ago, and the site was excavated for the advance of the Great Central Railway, seven or more pits were found, one with a rusty chain in it. They were about four feet in diameter at the top, and seven feet at the bottom, with dished floors. They varied from about twelve to eighteen feet in depth. We had no knowledge of anything of the kind in local history. Two others were found a distance away that could have had no connection with the prison site." Formerly at Monte Carlo the bodies of suicides were thrust into the holes that riddle the limestone rock and gave it the name of Les Spelunges. But the conditions became insanitary, and Italian workmen were employed to get them out, and carry them away to sea and there sink them. (p. 50.) "Formerly it was the way in which wells were ascended and descended in Nottingham, by means of notches cut in the side for the insertion of toes and fingers. I have had to do with the exploration of the base of Edward IV.'s Tower at Nottingham Castle, destroyed with gunpowder during the Civil War. In one corner of the basement we found a well filled with rubbish. This the workmen cleared out for over fifty feet, and all the way down were notches in the wall, and the men went up and down like monkeys, using no other means for ascending and descending." (p. 83.) Ventholes for smoke were common in Nottingham, Sneinton, and Mansfield. (p. 82.) SOUTERRAINS. Mr. Stevenson writes relative to the pits before the entrance doors of refuges: "Some years ago I had a part in exploring the Norman Keep of Scarborough Castle, erected early in the reign of Henry II.; we worked under the entrance staircase, and found a pit arched over at a later period and covered with a stone landing, but originally it must have been a pit or well in front of the only entrance door. It was partly cleared out of fallen masonry and rubbish, but not properly explored. Overhead was a shoot for stones or molten lead. It would appear that the pit system was abandoned about the close of the Middle Ages." (p. 98.) "It is fairly well determined in the 'History of Nottingham' that the Roman Catholics in Elizabeth's and James I.'s reign met secretly in the caves in the rock of the town. They were also refuges of the Dissenters in the days of Charles II."