Dr. Statement of Receipts and Disbursements of the Numismatic Society, from June, 1884, to June, 1885. THE NUMISMATIC SOCIETY IN ACCOUNT WITH ALFRED E. COPP, TREASURER. Cr. £ 8. d. To Messrs. Virtue & Co., for printing Chronicle, Part I. of 1884 37 12 6 ditto Part III. of 1884. 39 18 0 23 Mrs. Ayres, for Coffee, &c. ditto gratuity for Attendance. Mrs. Parkinson, housekeeper. Gratuity W. S. W. Vaux, Esq., Rent of 4, St. Martin's Place, ,, W. S. W. Vaux, Esq., expenses of removing books to Composition Fees Entrance Fees Annual Subscriptions Received for Chronicles : J. Russell Smith W. A. Cotton Col. Tobin Bush, for foreign postage Half-year's Dividend on £600 Consols, less 3s. 9d. Pro- Ditto, less 5s. 3d. Property Tax, due 5th January, Mr. C. E. Mitchell (per Messrs. H. S. King & Co.) " H. Grevel, foreign bookseller F. J. Lees, for engraving Fire Insurance premium David Nutt, for books supplied 076 Treasurer and Librarian, for Postages, Receipts, &c. 2 10 0 4 4 0 0 15 0 0 15 0 600 In consequence of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Edward Thomas, the President presented the Medal of the Society to Mr. Head, with the request that he would convey it to him, and at the same time made the following remarks :: It is with much pleasure that I present to you, on behalf of Mr. Thomas, the medal which the Council of this Society has awarded to him in recognition of his long-continued services to numismatic science, especially in the field of Oriental research. Ever since the year 1846 he has been a contributor to the pages of our Journal, and of that of the Royal Asiatic Society; and I need hardly recall to the memory of our members his essays on the coins of the Pathan Sultans of Hindustan, on those of the Sah Kings of Surashtra, of the Kings of Ghazin, of the Mohammedan Arabs of Persia, and on Bactrian, Sassanian, and Armenian coins, which have now become classical. As the Editor of the Numismatic Essays of the late James Prinsep, and more recently of the new Edition of Marsden's Numismata Orientalia, to which he contributed an Essay on ancient Indian Weights, Mr. Thomas has also deserved well of our science. Outside the region of pure numismatics I may also refer to Mr. Thomas's suggestive paper on Jainism, or the early faith of Asoka, and on the historical value of the identification of the rivers of the Veda in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. I trust that the medal which you will place in his hands may afford him the satisfaction of knowing that his lifelong labours are not unappreciated by those who have been working in other portions of the same field. Mr. Head having briefly replied, the President proceeded to deliver an address as follows: --- When I had the honour of addressing you at our last Anniversary meeting, our Society, owing to our old quarters in St. Martin's Place being required for Government purposes, was on the verge of becoming houseless and homeless, and the place of our future habitation was a subject of anxious speculation. The question of where our local habitation was to be, has since been happily solved; and for the excellent and commodious apartments in which we are now assembled the Society has again to be grateful for the kind services of our excellent past President Mr. Vaux,' to whose intervention with the Royal Asiatic Society we are indebted for our home, in the same manner as in past years it was by his means that we were accepted as tenants by the Royal Society of Literature. Our present landlords have granted us most liberal terms, and though we have had to make some little outlay in the purchase of bookcases the expenses of our removal have been comparatively light. Our numbers are well maintained and our meetings well attended, and the Report which you have heard from our Treasurer shows that the Society is still able to pay its expenses. The Society's medal has this year been awarded to our distinguished member, Mr. Edward Thomas, who for a period of nearly forty years has been a constant contributor to our Journal. May he long continue to wield his numismatic and archæological pen! The pages of the Numismatic Chronicle have been well filled during the past year, and the subjects discussed have as usual been of all ages and all countries. In In Greek numismatics we have had several important papers. Mr. Warwick Wroth has found cause to revert to a subject treated of by the late Mr. Borrell fully forty years ago. 1821 a large hoard of archaic Greek coins was found in the Island of Santorin, on which a short note was published in the Chronicle for 1843-44, and it is to supplement the information then given that Mr. Wroth has laboured. The fact that the coins are nearly all uninscribed renders their attribution difficult; but some advance can be made from the state of numismatic knowledge in 1848, and the photographic processes now 1 Now, alas! no more. Mr. Vaux died suddenly on June 21st, three days after this address was delivered. available have placed a number of the coins on trustworthy record for the study of future numismatists. Canon Greenwell has again favoured us with a paper on some rare Greek coins, of which a large proportion are in his own cabinet. Among the more remarkable are a tridrachm of Poseidonia on which the bull is marked with a caduceus, a singularly beautiful coin of Camarina with the head of Herakles on the obverse, an octadrachm of Ichnæ probably unique, and some unpublished coins of Larissa, Lampsacus, Cyrene and Evesperis. Some curious coins of Cnidus and Sinope are also figured. For a detailed monograph on the coins of the last-mentioned town we are indebted to our Honorary Member, M. J. P. Six, of Amsterdam. Following the example of Mr. Head in his paper on the Coins of Ephesus, the author has adopted a chronological arrangement, dividing the coins under nine periods, the earliest being from B.C. 480 to 415 and the latest from B.C. 189 to 183. The head of an eagle which forms the principal device on the earliest coins is succeeded by the well-known type of the eagle perched upon a dolphin, which now occupies the reverse of the coin, while the head of the nymph Sinope occupies the obverse. About B.C. 400 the names of magistrates begin to appear, and about B.C. 360 the name of the Persian satrap Datames occurs on the coins. Other remarkable coins appear to have been struck under Abdemon and Ariarathes about the middle of the fourth century; but in the days of Alexander the Great the autonomy of Sinope was again restored and the names of the Prytanes again appear. In B.C. 290 the Attic standard was introduced and the types become more varied, and one of the latest coins, a magnificent tetradrachm, bears the seated Apollo modified from the coins of Antiochus III. After B.C. 183, when the place was taken by Pharnaces, the issue of silver coins at Sinope seems to have ceased and none but those in bronze were struck. The aplustre and prow of a ship, which are common types, refer no doubt to the great naval power of Sinope, but the fish seems to be a dolphin and not a tunny, for the fisheries с of which Sinope was famous. M. Six has appended to his paper a classification of the coins of Heracleia, together with those of Amastris, founded by the wife of Dionysius, tyrant of Heracleia, who afterwards became the wife of Lysimachus. The synopsis he has given of the coinage of these three towns will prove of the utmost value to the student of the Greek coinage of the shores of the Euxine. Professor Gardner has added another valuable monograph to those which have already so frequently appeared in our journal. This time it is on the Coins of Zacynthus, an island not rich in historical events, but possessing much numismatic interest. Its history is divided by the author into eight periods, the earliest being before the Peloponnesian War B.c. 520 to 431, and the last in Roman Imperial times. Its earliest coins seem to exhibit a combination of the Æginetan and Attic standards, and the principal symbols upon them relate to the worship of Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysos. In the second period the head of Apollo, or occasionally his whole figure, forms the principal type. In the third period, a remarkable coin bearing the Infant Herakles on the reverse recalls a class of coins issued by several of the cities on the Asiatic coast in alliance, after the victory of Conon at Cnidus, in B.C. 394. Though Zacynthus probably did not join the alliance, the type is significant of the revolt of the island against Sparta. I need not dwell upon the other periods, but the coins struck by Sosius, the renowned general of Mark Antony, are of great interest, whether we class them in the series of Roman family coins or among those of the Isles of Greece. Another question relating to the classification of coins has also been treated by Professor Gardner, who has for the first time attempted the determination of the coinage issued by Hannibal when in Italy. He is inclined to regard a set of coins in electrum and of Campanian mintage as bearing clear traces of the influence of the Carthaginian chief. In metal and weight these coins correspond with the late issue of Carthage, the |