The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

26 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE
like Mr. Macdonald's Coin-Types, or articles like Professor
Gardner's, which show that the wider issues are not being
neglected by our own writers. There is another aspect of
the study, the supreme illustration of which is Head's
Historia, and that is the making of the stores collected by
specialists accessible to archaeologists in general and, so to
speak, peptonizing it for educational purposes.
For it must
not be forgotten that the Historia, useful and indispensable
as it is to numismatists, is still more so to archaeologists in
general. Believing that a gentle course of numismatics
should be prescribed for all students of ancient history,
I have made one or two modest attempts to present the
material in an assimilable form. But I must admit that
the royalties on the books in question furnish most dis-
couraging proof of a contraiy opinion on the part of our
teachers at the Universities and elsewhere. More success,
I trust, will attend the efforts of my colleagues, if, as I hope,
they supplement their catalogues by
books of this kind.
There is, as reviewers say, a crying want for a book illus-
trating Indian history from the coinage ;
for a good general
manual of the English coinage which will do something
more than merely describe the chief varieties ; and for
a handbook of the coinage of Roman Britain. The Assist-
ants with whom it is my privilege to work are as efficient,
scholarly and energetic a body of men as the Medal Room
has ever possessed, and I am sure this hint will not fall on
barren soil. For my own part, my hands are full with
a bulky work on Italian Medals, which has already occupied
my leisure for some ten years, and is likely to last as long
again. Even so, thanks to the storm which has shattered,
for at least a generation to come, the international fabric
of scholarship, it will emerge, if it survives at all, in a frag-
mentary condition. It is impossible, however, in the face
of the present stress, to think seriously of such a subject
as numismatics. I agree with a distinguished antiquary