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 praenomen _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.

[Footnote 12: Pl. VII. gives a correct plan of former discoveries
as far as I have been able to ascertain, and these I have made up to
April 19th, 1884.]

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, that was reached through layers of mud, Roman
tiles, building materials, and mixed soil, was one and the same with
the hot water of the Kingston Bath that then occupied the site of the
Bath called Lucas's Bath, discovered in 1755; and the levels were
the same. I pumped out this water with powerful pumps, emptying by so
doing the Kingston Baths. This enabled me to sink to a depth of 20ft.,
passing in so doing a flight of four steps at the point (A) on