THE PAST HISTORY OF THE FOREST OF ESSEX. 121
possible that the early Roman invaders may have had intentions
for increasing the productivity of the Island by making new
clearings. As in the second century many town walls were
built of a size much greater than the settlement within necessi-
tated to allow for probable future expansion, so possibly many
agricultural survey lines were laid down for forest clearing on
a large scale. Just as the former expectation never materialised,
so it seems that the latter plan suffered a similarly ignominious
end. We may ascribe the lengthy stretches of Roman roads
around Dunmow that appear "to end in the air" as remaining
survey roads, witnesses of the abortive Roman plan for forest
clearing on the fertile Boulder Clay. It must be recalled that
the Romans were faced in Essex and the rest of Britain with
heavier and wetter soils when compared with those obtaining"
in their Mediterranean home. In Britain it seems a not unreason-
able suggestion that the Romans allowed the British to continue
the cultivation of the soils in those areas and by those methods
in existence at the time of the Conquest. We must imagine the
Romans as acting the part of beneficent landlords in encouraging
agricultural methods already in being. With their knowledge
only of the light "aratrum" plough of the Mediterranean, and
of soils which it was fatal to plough deeply, the Romans do not
seem to have introduced any new agricultural methods or
implements to the Northern European races of the time. In
Collingwood's words, the Roman era passed away and "the
peasant population remained standing very much where it had
always stood." It is, therefore, apparent that could the
Romano-British agricultural areas be ascertained we should be
in a position to define the forest areas cleared during Romano-
British times. Comparing the distribution of those areas culti-
vated in Romano-British times (if they are recoverable) with
the position of districts in which we noticed the occurrence of
La Tene III. settlement sites we should be able to make some
statement regarding the amount of deforestation obtaining during
Roman times. It is, of course, impossible to gather information
regarding agricultural areas from the Ordnance Survey map of
Roman Britain.
An attempt to reconstruct these areas led the writer to
trace probable vestiges of centuriation apparent in existing
routeways of the county. Many of the roads and footpaths in