opening the Roman drains I found a branch one at this place, which induces me to think that a large cold or swimming bath occupied the eastern wing, the baptisterium or frigida lavatio. Still farther eastward are fragments of Roman buildings which I have seen only in a very fragmentary way, as no excavations of any extent have been made. I believe the apartments necessary to complete the system of the modern Turkish bath, or rather the ancient bath, with the requisite waiting rooms and corridors, stood there.

After these discoveries of the middle of the last century but very partial excavations were made in proximity to the baths, and those that were made were never sunk to a depth sufficient to reach the ruins. The flood of hot water had no drain to carry it off, and was maintained at such a height in the soil that whenever a sinking was made, it was impossible without pumping machinery to sufficiently overcome it. To my discovery of the Roman drain, or rather to Mr. Irvine's, and the excavating, opening, and reconstructing it which followed (under my superintendence, at the charges of the Corporation), enabling me to drain off the hot water from the soil, I owe the ability to reveal what had been hidden since the destruction of the city of Bath in the year A.D. 577.¹⁰ The stopping up and destruction of the drain prevented the water from flowing away, so that the buildings of the baths were filled with water of a height until it reached the level of the adjoining land, covering, as a guardian, the lead and other valuables. Soil then gravitated into the ruins and thus further assisted in preserving the antiquities, so that they were altogether hidden from the people who re-built the ruined city of Bath, and from those who in successive generations succeeded them. The subterranean "passage traced 24ft." from the western side of Lucas's bath, "at the end of which was found a leaden cistern," was not in any way Roman work, but mediæval, and was formed some time after the construction of the Abbey house, as an aqueduct for the hot water with which the soil was saturated. This construction is the only evidence of an early discovery of this eastward wing of the bath, indeed the only evidence of mediæval work of any kind in connection with the baths, except the enclosure of the various springs or wells. The King's Bath, the Cross, and the Lepers' Bath were simply the wells or cisterns of the springs which were bathed in to the damage of the purity of the water, without dressing-rooms of any kind.

This concludes the particulars of the important discoveries which we possess of the last century, which were then correctly believed to be only portions of still greater baths.¹¹ In 1799 (or, as I believe, in 1809, the more correct date) a portion of what has proved to be the north-west semi-circular exedra of the Great Bath was found, and six to nine years later a part of the south-west rectangular exedra of the same bath. The discovery of 1799 (or rather 1809) is shown on the Rev. Prebendary Scarth's map as being the northern apse of a bath on the western end of the great bath, as suggested by Dr. Sutherland's plan and was to correspond with Lucas's Bath. The semi-circular exedra discovered subsequently to a deed dated Sept. 1808 (therefore in that year or subsequently) is also figured by the Rev. Prebendary Scarth, as on the south end of the same western bath and a piece of a rectangular exedra as the eastern wall of this western bath and the boundary between it and the Great Bath.

All these fragments I have lately proved to be portions of the great Roman Bath (Plates VII. and VIII.), and being within instead of without that building. The Rev. Prebendary Scarth omits altogether to figure the southern rectangular exedra, found at the same time as the last named discovery. He also omits the discoveries made in 1809 (?) beneath the houses at the north-western end of York Street. In 1790 very valuable discoveries were made in digging the foundation of the present Pump Room. Many writers have treated of them and expressed opinions as to the character of the work and the meaning of the design, and Mr. Scharf, in Archæologia, Vol. XXXVI., has done ample justice to these most interesting vestiges: They have been described by Pownall, Lysons, Warner, Collins, Scharf, Tite, and Scarth, as being portions of a Temple of the usual type, dedicated to Sul Minerva. Whitaker, in a review of Warner's History of Bath, printed in the Anti-Jacobin, Vol. X., 1801, differs from all these writers, although believing the remains to be a portion of a temple, and thought they were a part of a building of the form of "a rotunda," as the Pantheon. "The Pantheon of Minerva Medica, an agnomen very similar in allusiveness to our prænomen of Sulinis, for Minerva is noticed expressly by Ruius and Victor in their short notes concerning the structures of Rome, as then standing in the Esquiline quarter. The form of a Pantheon is made out by the multiplicity of niches,... and such, we believe, was our own Temple of Minerva at Bath." It would occupy too much space were I to attempt to add to this paper my views of this discovery, but I may briefly say, that I am satisfied that they were not the remains of a Temple, but a portion of the central Portico and grand Vestibule of the Baths. I have not gone fully into the reasons that induced Whitaker to believe that the discoveries showed that the building was a Rotunda, but it is curious that he should have thought they had a similarity to the Pantheon at Rome, which antiquaries since his time have proved was not 'built for a temple, but that it was an entrance hall or vestibule of the Baths of Agrippa, although it is doubtful if the Rotunda was built at the same time as the Portico, which was, without doubt, erected B.C. 27.

The grand Roman enclosure of the Hot well (Pl. VII.¹²) (which I have lately discovered and excavated, beneath the King's Bath, on the south of this principal Portico) is again utilised, and forms a tank for the mineral water, from which are fed the baths and fountains with water, pure as it rises from "depths unknown," and secured from any possibility of contamination in its passage, through the newly discovered water ducts and drains of the Romans.

In 1871, whilst making some necessary excavation to remedy a leak from the King's Bath that apparently ran beneath Abbey Passage, I found that the hot water,