of drains and aqueducts, when the flanged edges were turned up and, set in the cement, formed the side of the water-course. A very good example of this use of the roof-tiles may be seen in the drain at Wroxeter mentioned above. Internally, the walls of the Roman houses were covered with fine hard cement, which was painted in fresco, that is, the colours were laid on the cement while it was wet, and they thus set with it, and became almost imperishable. In some of the houses in Roman Britain, and especially in the large villas, the internal walls were covered with fine historical subjects as in the walls at Pompeii, and sufficient remains have been found in this island to show that they were here also executed in no mean style of art. Nothing of this kind has yet been discovered in Uriconium; but numerous fragments are picked up in the diggings, on which the colouring is perfectly fresh, and which exhibit portions of designs which are always elegant and in good taste. In one case a piece of the stucco from the internal surface of a wall contained some letters of an inscription. One of the walls near the hypocaust where the three skeletons were found presented a singular and rather laborious method of ornamenting its interior surface. Instead of being painted, it was tessellated, the surface being covered with tessellæ, one half of an inch by three-fifths in dimension, set in the cement, alternately of dark and light colours, in horizontal lines, so as to produce somewhat the appearance of chequer-work. Perhaps, when entire, it presented an ornamental pattern. I have already stated that a similarly tessellated wall was found in the easternmost part of this line of rooms. Circumstances have come to light which show that the exterior of the walls of houses were also plastered and painted. The exterior of the semicircular end of the largest hypocaust yet opened was thus plastered over, and painted red with stripes of yellow.