COUNCIL FOR 1854. 11 



interesting and important is a large fragment of an inscribed 

 Roman tablet found at a considerable depth below the surface, 

 by the workmen employed in digging the drain from Monk Bar 

 to the river Ouse, and presented to the Society by the Corpora- 

 tion of the City. The fragment contains so large a portion of 

 the inscription, that the letters which have been lost may, 

 without much difficulty, be supplied. It records the execution 

 of some public work by the ninth Legion, by order of the 

 Emperor Trajan. It is, with one exception, the oldest memorial 

 of the kind that has been discovered in Britain ; and being 

 connected with the earliest period of the history of Koman 

 York, it may be justly considered as the most valuable of the 

 ancient local remains by which our Museum is distinguished. 

 A full description is about to appear in the Second Part of the 

 Proceedings of the Society. 



During the last year the remains of a Roman villa were 

 discovered in the parish of Collingham, in a field near the road 

 leading from Bramham to Wetherby. In the course of the 

 excavations which were carried on there under the superintend- 

 ence of Mr. Procter and some other members of the Council, a 

 large portion of a beautiful tessellated pavement was brought to 

 light. This being carefully removed by our sub-curator, 

 Mr. Baines, has been presented to the Society, with a bath, or 

 a cistern, and remains of a hypocaust, by the Rev. B. Eamonson 

 and the other Trustees of Lady Hastings' Charity, to whom the 

 field belongs, and at whose invitation the excavations were 

 undertaken. 



Besides the pavement from Toft -green which has been so 

 successfully reconstructed in the lower room of the Hospitium, 

 the Society has in its possession another found in the same place, 

 with a large border of a third : and this last excavation at 

 Collingham has added to these an interesting portion of a 

 fourth. The Society has long had authority to take possession 

 of z. fifths buried beneath a saw-pit in Clementhorpe. Another ^ 

 reported to be more beautiful in pattern, and more highly 

 finished than any of the preceding, was lately discovered in the 

 neighbourhood of Easingwold, not far from the line of the 

 Roman road between the station at Malton and Isurium. It 



