of English and American cases decided that landowners were entitled to buried valuables. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reconsidered the rule in 1908. The case before it involved three workers who had found coins while digging on their employer's land. The Court decided along the lines of the 1904 Oregon case and awarded the coins to the finders. For the next 30 years, the courts of a number of states, including Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin, applied this modified "treasure trove" rule, most recently in 1948. Since that time, however, the rule has fallen out of favour. Modern legal texts regard it as "a recognized, if not controlling, rule of decision", but one commentator has called it "a minority rule of dubious heritage that was misunderstood and misapplied in a few states between 1904 and 1948". Present-day legal definitions United Kingdom England, Northern Ireland, and Wales Throughout the ages, farmers, archaeologists and amateur treasure hunters have unearthed important treasures of immense historical, scientific and financial value. However, the strictness of the common law rules meant that such items were sometimes not treasure trove. The items risked being sold abroad, or were only saved for the nation by being purchased at a high price. Mention has already been made of the objects comprising the Sutton Hoo ship burial, which were not treasure trove as they had been interred without any intention to retrieve them. The objects were later presented to the nation by their owner, Edith May Pretty, in a 1942 bequest. In March 1973, a hoard of about 7,811 Roman coins was found buried in a field at Coleby in Lincolnshire. It was made up of antoniniani believed to have been minted between AD 253 and 281. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales held in the 1981 case of Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster v. G.E. Overton (Farms) Ltd. that the hoard was not treasure trove as the coins were bronze and did not have a substantial silver content. Thus, it belonged to the owner of the field and could not be retained by the British Museum. To remedy the faults of the old treasure trove regime, the Treasure Act 1996 introduced a new scheme which came into effect on 24 September 1997. Any treasure found on and after that date regardless of the circumstances in which it was deposited, even if it was lost or