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informs ns that as many as fourteen of these coffins were 
discovered, the greater part of which it would no doubt he 
impossible to raise in consequence of the shape of the drain. 
One, however, is in private hands at Selby, and another, by 
the kindness of Mr. C. T. Newstead, was presented to our 
Museum shortly after its discovery. This coffin, which has 
been considerably injured, is over five feet in length, and seems 
to have been shaped with an axe. It contains the skeleton of a 
female in a good state of preservation, although the bones have 
taken the colour of the wood and of the soil with which they 
were covered. A peculiarity in the head requires a remark. 
In the centre of the skull there is a small round hole discernible, 
which has evidently been made with an instrument. A similar 
hole was discovered in the skull of a Homan lady which was 
dug up in the recent excavations for the new railway station at 
York. What means this handiwork of very rude and early 
surgery? Professor Polleston suggested to me that it might 
possibly have been intended to prevent epilepsy. At the neck 
of the lady from Selby, on whose skull this rude operation had 
been performed, was a set of seven large beads, (now destroyed) 
of which, unhappily, we possess only a drawing. They are of 
graduated sizes, with a large bead in the centre, and of an 
elegant shape. As far as I can gather, they were of hard clay, 
with lines of red running around the edges. Another bead, of 
plain brown stone-colour, from the same place, was presented to 
our museum by Mr. Morrell in 1864. In the course of the 
summer of this present year the re-building of a public-house 
on the Church Hill at Selby afforded a better opportunity of 
examining this ancient burial ground, and by the great kindness 
of the owner of the property and of Messrs. Woods and 
Atkinson, every facility was given to Dr. Gibson and myself 
for making a more minute investigation than was possible in 
1857. The space excavated would not, I think, be more than 
thirty feet by twenty. In this coffins were discovered at 
various levels from five feet to about eight. Of these there 
were between fifteen and twenty uncovered, either entire or in 
fragments. The whole were in black earth saturated and 
dripping with moisture, and in many instances the wood was 
