The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

KOYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY. 25
with Greek numismatics. That position is hardly yet
challenged, in spite of the ambitious but somewhat un-
wieldily organized heavy artillery of the Berlin Corpus, or
the brilliant individual "attack" of the French Traite or
Recueil. Apart from the Catalogue, Head's Historia, the
" Bible of the Medal Koom" as we used to call it, had been
in existence for some six years. Mr. Grueber had just
finished the second volume of the Anglo-Saxon Catalogue,
and was beginning to think of his Handbook and of his
monumental Eoman Catalogue. Mr. Wroth was at work on
Troas I can remember my pride when he asked and
accepted my opinion about some small question
of classi-
fication and Mr. Kapson was daily sacrificing himself to the
demands of countless students for information about Indian
coins. Professor Gardner and Mr. Grueber and Professor
Kapson are still happily with us ; and Mr. Keary, whom
I have not mentioned before because he had already retired
before I came on the scene, has with fine public spirit
returned to the Department as a voluntary assistant, after
twenty-eight years of absence, to take the place of those
who have gallantly offered their services to the Army.
I may be permitted to recall the fact that the first of
Mr. Keary's printed works with which I became acquainted
was a certain paper of questions on which I was invited, as
a candidate for the British Museum, to display my ignorance
of the elements of numismatics. A foreign numismatist
once described a volume of the British Museum Catalogue as
more interesting than a novel ; but I must confess to preferring
Mr. Keary's novels to his numismatic examination
papers.
By 1893, 1 suppose, the great days of the English school of
Greek numismatics were over. The grand lines of classi-
fication had been laid down, the general principles of
dating established. The work of the next twenty years has
chiefly been to fill in details, although there are books