Altho’ we have now traversed the line of the mural Barrier from one extremity to the other, and examined all the camps that lie upon its track, we have met with but seventeen or eighteen of the twenty-three that are mentioned in the Notitia as stations _per lineam Valli_. According to Horsley, five remain to be accounted for, and according to Hodgson, who rejects Watch-cross, six. These must be sought for among the stations which support the great Barrier on its northern or southern side. As the names of the camps north of the Wall have been ascertained by independent authority, and as they do not correspond[Sidenote: SECONDARY FORTS OF THE NOTITIA.] with those of the remaining stations of the Notitia, it is agreed on all hands, that the list is to be completed from among the fortified places which support the Barrier on the south. Without dwelling upon the reasons which have guided the conjectures, (for they are but conjectures at the best), of the great author of the Britannia Romana, and other antiquaries, in appropriating the remaining names supplied by the Notitia, it may be sufficient to say, that as the primary stations, so far as they have been ascertained, are found to be arranged in that document in regular consecutive order, beginning at the eastern extremity of the line, it is conceived to be highly probable that a similar course has been pursued with the secondary camps. If, therefore, we could correctly ascertain which, of all the camps that dot the country in the southern vicinage of the Wall, are mural stations, we might, with tolerable plausibility, bestow upon them in their order the remaining names of the Notitia roll. But this is a task of great difficulty, and considerable uncertainty must necessarily attend the appropriation of the names upon this principle. An examination of the forts themselves, however, on both sides of the Wall, is a task equally easy and instructive, and it is one which is essential to a correct estimate of the strength of the principal fortification—the Wall. Sir John Clark must have altogether overlooked the existence of these supporting stations, when he wrote in the following strain to his friend Gale:—