FOUND IN TIIK UED OF THE lUVER WEAR. 121 



well-marked camps and fortifications in the neighbourhood oi 

 Durham, would easily account for straggling parties of soldiery 

 in the surrounding country. 



The main interest of the remains before us, I repeat, consists in 

 the admirable preservation, both of the coin and the skulls ; their 

 having been found in such a position as to give every reason 

 for believing that in life their history is as closely connected as 

 I have tried to make it at the present day ; and the peculiarities 

 of the medal itself, which, so far as I have been able to discover, 

 show it to be a specimen of a coinage hitherto undescribed. I 

 assert this with some reservation, because my opportunities of 

 comparison and research have been but limited. 



As regards the antlers, of which I show two as samples, they 

 evidently belong to the red-deer, and are only remarkable for 

 their large size and good preservation. They merely corroborate 

 what is already well known, that these magnificent animals 

 abounded in the valleys and forests of the Wear; the latter being, 

 up to a very recent period, dense and extensive on the northern 

 slopes of the shore near which these antlers were found. In an 

 old Saxon poem, referred to the Danish- Saxon period, between 

 the years 780 and the time of the Conquest, and found in Hickes' 

 Anglo-Saxon Grammar, the Wear is described as 



A river of rapid waves ; 

 And there live in it 

 Fishes of various kinds, 

 Mingling with the floods ; 

 And there grow 

 Great forests ; 

 There live in the recesses 

 Wild animals of many sorts ; 

 In the deep vallies 

 Deer innumerable. 



There are, then, the following facts deducible from these relics- 

 1. That the Komans visited in their wanderings the course and 

 outlet of the Wear. 2. That they most probably belonged to 

 the army of Hadrian, the third legion of whose Asturian soldiers 

 is said to have been stationed at Chester-le-Street. 3. That 

 substances, animal, vegetable, and metallic, may be preserved to 



VOL. IV. PT. II. Q 



