Medals and Badges for Colleges, Schools, Horticultural, Agricultural and other Societies. Designs made and Estimates given for Dies and Medals. MEDALS STRUCK IN PURE GOLD, SILVER, BRONZE AND WHITE METAL. No. 1029 MASTER STREET, (Formerly 1123 Chestnut St.) PHILADELPHIA, PENNA. [ESTABLISHED 1823.]' WILLIAM H. WARNER. CHARLES K. WARNER. Magazine of American History, A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO HISTORY, AND THE LITERA- Five Dollars per Year, in advance. HISTORICAL PUBLICATION CO., 743 BROADWAY, N. Y. American Antiquarian, AND ORIENTAL JOURNAL, AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE, PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY BY F. H. REVELL, 150 Madison Street, Chicago, Ill. REV. STEPHEN D. PEET, MENDON, ILL., Editor. Price $4 Per Year, in Advance. Devoted to the antiquities of all lands, including Oriental, Biblical, and Classical as well as American. It treats of folk lore, mythologies, native religions, primitive customs, ancient architecture and art, prehistoric relics and races, and many other topics. Sustained by the best scholars in the country. Full of curious and interesting materials. Valuable to all classes, but especially to students of American Archaeology. MAY, 14 1889 Two Dollars a Year, in Advance. [Entered at Post Office, Boston, at Second Class Rates.] Single Copies, 50 Cts. VOL. XXIII.-No. 4.] AMERICAN WHOLE NO. 124. JOURNAL OF NUMISMATICS AND BULLETIN OF AMERICAN NUMISMATIC AND ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. APRIL, 1889. S. H. & H. CHAPMAN, 1348 PINE STREET, PHILADELPHIA. LYMAN H. LOW, FOURTEENTH ST., NEW YORK CITY. H. HOFFMANN, 1 RUE DU BAC, PARIS, FRANCE. W. S. LINCOLN & SON, 69 NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON, ENGLAND. All Communications to be addressed to Jeremiah Colburn, 18 Somerset Street, Boston, Mass. The Critic. A WEEKLY REVIEW DEVOTED TO LITERATURE. ART, SINGLE COPIES 10 CENTS, $3.00 A YEAR IN ADVANCE. The Decorator and Furnisher. PUBLISHED BY THE ART-TRADES PUBLISHING and PRINTING CO.,. MONTHLY, $4 A YEAR, IN ADVANCE, SINGLE COPIES 35 CENTS. W. M. HALSTED, President, 150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. American Journal of Numismatics. PUBLISHED QUARTERLY,-THE TWENTY-FOURTH VOLUME BEGINS JULY 1st, 1889. Subscription, TWO DOLLARS per Volume, in advance. Prompt remittances are requested. Communications desired from those interested in the Science. FROM THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES, PHILADELPHIA. THE American Journal of Numismatics has probably done more than any other single agency to advance the interests of numismatic science in this country. To those who have no higher idea of numismatology than a more or less systematic hoarding and trading of coins, an investigation of such material as this Quarterly furnishes, would come with the freshness of a revelation. Few sciences bear directly or indirectly upon so many human interests, or throw light into so many dark corners, as this study of coins, medals, and tokens. It is the daughter of metallurgy no less than of fine art, the handmaid of history, economics, and archaeology. The American Journal is rich in its original matter, as well as in its selections from the writings of the highest authorities at home and abroad. It comes in fine dress, clearly printed on heavy paper, usually with a frontispiece illustration. With the July number, it enters upon the twenty-fourth volume. Published by the Boston Numismatic Society, at 18 Somerset Street, Boston, Mass. Price, $2 a year. CONTEMPORANEOUS with those last described is a series of thick and roughly-formed medals, bearing the same monogram, and above it one of the letters C, G, or T (not improbably to denote the town of mintage, Colombo, Galle, or Trincomallee). On those in which the C surmounts the monogram the word "stiver" appears in full with the date below. Those with C and T have the abbreviated form of the value, while on the 2 stiver piece of Galle (?) the value, 2 ST, occurs below the monogram, and on the reverse under the date the letters in Tamil, the initial of "Elankai," the vernacular name of Ceylon. The difference in style and make between these two series of coins, the "challis" and the thick ones now described, is so extremely marked that I think there can hardly be a doubt but that the former were made in a European mint and exported for the Eastern currency, while the latter have the most decided appearance of being "country-made." One particularly rough specimen I came across in a village near Colombo, which consisted of a small bar of metal about the size of one's little finger, with either end flattened out, the monogram occupying one end and the value, 4 ST, the other. This piece has, I believe, now found a fit resting place in the Colombo Museum. Belonging to this series is a neatly executed stiver piece, having on the obverse the monogram surmounted by a C, and on the reverse ST. The greater number of these thick coarse coins, however, bear no date, and are smaller than those already described, and these (or most of them) were undoubtedly struck on the main land. By far the commonest have above the monogram the initial letter of the mint town, Negapatam, while on the other side occurs the name of that port in full, thus affording additional evidence of the truth of the theory that the C, G, and T alluded to above were intended, as suggested by Mr. Rhys Davids, to serve a similar purpose. Another small series of coins (Figures 52, 53, and 54), which I cannot satisfactorily describe, bears above the monogram the letter P, doubtless for the mint town Pulicat, where we know a Dutch mint was at one time established, and where most of the specimens in my collection were procured. Of these, figures 52 and 53 represent two specimens of the same issue, the one showing the upper, the other the lower portion of the reverse die. On these, three incomprehensible figures occur, one above another, the upper somewhat resembling the emblematic sun and moon, frequently met with on the products of the native mints. The two lower figures appear similar, and may be rude imitations of boats, on either side of which are two others equally, if not more, inexplicable, and beneath all what looks like an illiterate attempt to copy a Persian word. Figure 54 is equally incomprehensible, and on the obverse of this even the P is reversed and written ¶, while the reverse reduces the whole of the figures I have tried to describe to a nearer resemblance to an unintelligible Hindustani word. Another coin in my collection, bearing a V above the monogram, bears on the reverse what, by a vast stretch of imagination, might be taken to read Zerb Palicat (in Persian), while another has a II above, with a reverse which is so confused that I have never been able to get the most imaginative numismatist to get further than the suggestion that it must be double Dutch. When one looks at these rude caricatures of coins (and, as we shall presently see, we were not far ahead of our Dutch neighbors at the time), and then compares them with the clear cut issues of the Moghals and Pathans struck centuries before, fine in design and exquisite in workmanship, with every letter well defined and clear, one can hardly believe that we were posing among them as a civilized and civilizing power, though for our own credit, be it said, we had not then got so far as the establishment of "Schools of Art." Early Dutch coins in silver are somewhat rare. Small one and two stiver pieces of 1820-30 are perhaps the commonest of the silver issues of the Dutch in the East. On the reverse they usually bear the arms of the respective States surmounted by a crown, and exactly resemble the "challis" I have already alluded to, except for the 1.S or 2. S in the field, and the milling which runs round the field and not, as in modern coins, round the edge. On the reverse we find the name of the State, e. g., HOL-LAN-DIA OF ZEE-LAN-DIA in three lines, with the date below. One meets, too, with six-stiver pieces, bearing on one side a ship and on the other the coat of arms surmounted by a crown and having in the field the date and value of the piece. The Dutch are also said to have issued a "Rix-Dollar," but I have never come across a specimen, nor have I met any collector who has seen one; indeed, as far as I can learn, Bertolacci is the only author who ever mentions them. Possibly I The coins of Frisia or West-Frisia date back as far as 1660. In some specimens of this fine series we find instead of the usual coat of arms a crowned lion rampant left, bearing in his right paw a sword and in his left a bunch of arrows. These names, Frisia, Zeelandia, Hollandia, Gel Rae, and so forth, of course owe their origin to the Netherland provinces of Frisland, Zeeland, Holland and Gelderland, just as England boasts of her Nova Scotia and her New South Wales, or the coins may have been struck in those provinces. 2 In the part of the Revue Belge de Numismatique lately published, appears a translation by Count Maurin Nahuys of a letter written by a Mr. Canter Visscher, a Dutch Chaplain in Cochin in 1743, in which he gives the following description of coins current at that period: "Les monnaies païennes ou hindoues étaient des pagodes, espèces en or de la valeur de deux disdales, ayant le même poids que les ducats, mais d'un titre inférieure. Ces pièces doivent leur nom à l'image d'une idole, qu' elles portent d'un côté. Les espèces maures en circulation dans toutes les Indes étaient les roupies et demi-roupies en or ou en argent. "Les monnaies européennes étaient, en argent, les écus dis risdales, les ducatons, les piastres espagnoles dites |