66 



STYCAS FOUND NEAR ULLESKELF. 



Mr. Wellbeloved announced to the Meeting the purchase of 

 about 600 Stycas, a portion of a hoard discovered in March last, 

 in a field on the hanks of the river Wharfe, by a labouring man 

 named Jonathan Lee, in the service of Col. Thompson, while 

 engaged in plowing. The field called Wood-hill Close is 

 situated at the angle formed by the York and North Midland 

 Railway and the river Wharfe, in the township of Hornington 

 and parish of Bolton Percy. The coins when turned up by the 

 plough formed a hard compact irregular mass, about eight or nine 

 inches in length, and three or four inches in thickness ; the bag 

 or box in which, it is probable, they had been originally enclosed 

 having entirely perished. It happened that a slip had recently 

 taken place on the railway immediately adjoining the field, and 

 several men were at the time of the discovery employed in 

 repairing it. To these men Lee very imprudently boasted of 

 his good fortune ; and, exhibiting the hoard before them, sufiiered 

 them to chip ofi" fragments from it with their spades : he then 

 put it into the ground again, intending to carry it home when 

 he had finished his day's work. In the meantime, however, his 

 hidden treasure disappeared, and where it is now deposited, is 

 a secret which no one is able, or if able, willing to disclose. 

 The portion now in the possession of the Society was purchased 

 of a person employed on the railway : and these, with the 200 

 which Mr. Chapman of York has purchased and disposed of, 

 may have been those to which the men helped themselves, 

 when Lee displayed to them his treasure. Strict and frequent 

 inquiries have hitherto failed to trace the three or four thousand, 

 at the least, which must have composed the mass, when it was 

 stolen from its original discoverer. The number of coins in this 

 hoard could not have been much less than that of the hoard 

 found in 1842, in St. Leonard's Place ; but owing to the soil 

 in which they had lain, they were in a much worse condition. 

 Of those purchased by the Society, the Curator has been able to 

 ascertain and arrange no more than about 500. As far as an 

 opinion can be formed from these of the whole hoard, it seems 



