370 Antiquities. 



?ca may have encroached upon it ; but all these are mere 

 conjectures. 



ANTIGUITIES. 



M. Kachlcr, who is on a tour through the Crimea at 

 the expense of the Emperor of Russia, in a letter dated 

 August 1804, at Svinpheropol, says, That he has disco- 

 vered several curious old inscriptions of the temple ot 

 Apollo, at Olbia, without which several antient coins 

 could not have been ascribed to that city. He had found 

 above t200 old and scarce coins of that district, among 

 which was a very beautiful gold one of Olbia, the oldest of 

 all the known coins belonging to this country; also, a 

 beautiful gold figure of a syren, and a gold ear-ring, of ex- 

 cellent workmanship, both of Olbia, &c. This celebrated 

 anti(piary was expected to return to Petersburgh about the 

 end of last year. 



Some time ago, a peasant of the Veltschanskoi district, 

 in the Ukraine, found, not far from the village of Schikai- 

 lof, in ploushing a field, a copper vessel, covered with a 

 great deal of rust, and of a form not used by the inhabi- 

 tants of that district. This vessel contained a great num- 

 ber of antient Roman silver coins, of the size of a silver 

 piece of ten copecs. The weight of the vessel was two 

 pounds and a half, and that of the coins eleven. The lat- 

 ter, when cleaned, exhibited heads of Trajan, Vitellius, 

 Nero, Anthonv, and some of the early Roman emperors, 

 'i'he discovery (jf Roman coins in a district into which the 

 Eoman arms never penetrated, must appear as extraordinary 

 as that of Trench coins of the fifteenth and si.\teenth cen- 

 turies, found the same year in the Ukraine, not far from 

 Pultawa. But this circumstance may be explained, perhaps, 

 1)V supposing that among the Poles who were expelled from 

 their possessions al)out the middle of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, by the Cossacs of Lesser Russia, there were ricU 

 amateurs of antiquities, who had collected the above coins, 

 and, in consei]uence of the disturbed state of the country, 

 were obliged to burv them in the earth. The appearance 

 of French coins in the Ukraine may be more easily com- 

 prehended, whe:i it is recollected that Henry III. of France 

 was in possession, for a short fime, of the throne of Po- 

 land, and resided in that turbulent kingdom. It is vcrv 

 iirohable that a great many French coins were carried to 

 Poland by his numerous followers, and that they were tie- 

 posited by them in the places w here thev were found ; a 

 conjecture still I'urther strengthened bv manv of them being 

 1 inscribed 



