_Samian._—The early prosperity of London is well shown by the great quantity of Samian ware which has been found of the period about 60-85, and by the examples of the work of the best makers, such as Vitalis, Rubricius, Saturnus and Rufinus. Of the first-named there are some excellent vases in the collection at South Kensington; he distributed his pottery from Carthage to Carlisle, and from Pompeii to London. Saturnus has half a chapter to himself in a big book on the Roman pottery found in Trier. The Samian question is too vast for me to attempt to deal with it here, and I can merely note one or two details. In Fairholt’s sketch-books at the Victoria and Albert Museum there are several drawings of Samian fragments. One of these, which I have not seen elsewhere, is an excellent example of animals running under trees—a scheme taken over into our Castor-ware, which Dr. Haverfield thought might be a Celtic tradition (_Romanization_). (Fig. 141, and compare Fig. 138.) At the Guildhall are nearly a dozen fragments of a rare kind of Samian vase, in which the ornament of figures and foliage was applied in separate units, the leaves, etc., being linked up by stalks skilfully done by the “barbotine” method. Three larger and some smaller fragments come from a vase of rather globular shape which was very similar to a vase found at Cornhill, one of the chief treasures of the Roman Room at the British Museum. The latter is well described in Mr. Walter’s _Catalogue of Roman Pottery_, which is the best account available of pottery found in London. It is not observed that the Guildhall fragments contain a figure which is half lost in the restored vase at the British Museum. On the other hand, comparison with the latter would make it easy to restore the Guildhall example. The details of both were formed by the same stamps. I give in Figs. 142 and 143 the scheme of the decoration: B was the general shape of the pot. [Illustration: FIG. 141. ] [Illustration: FIG. 142. ] Two or three other sherds at the Guildhall belonged to a somewhat similar but smaller urn which had Bacchic subjects—a satyr with goat legs, and a faun before whom is a wine jar into which he seems to be dropping grape juice. These figures were evidently also set between scrolls of vegetation, and this also can be restored. Again there is a sherd of a vine pattern similar to Fig. 142, but, I think, from a third pot. There is also a figure from a dark-grey pot, which must have been yet another of the same kind. (For the last word on Samian pottery, see Oswald and Price’s _Terra Sigillata_.) A volume on the pottery found in London by a specialist, like that on Silchester, would be certain to bring out valuable historical results on the existence and persistence of Celtic wares, on importations before the Claudian Conquest, and on the large quantity of imports in early Roman days. [Illustration: FIG. 143. ]