26th December 1824

[Image: Carry Akroyd]

Found at the bottom of a dyke made in the roman bank some pootys of varied colors & the large garden ones of a russet color with a great many others of the meadow sort which we calld 'badgers' when I was a schoolboy found nowere now but in wet places — there is a great many too of a water species now extinct — the Dyke is 4 foot deep & the soil is full of these shells [have they not pain] here ever since the romans made the bank & does the water sorts not imply that the fields were all fen & under water or wet & uncultivated at that time I think it does — I never walk on this bank but the legions of the roman army pass by my fancys with their mysterys of nearly 2000 years hanging like a mist around them what changes hath passd since then — were I found these shells it was heath land above Windy Well