viously to the first entry of Muhammadan armies into Bengal, no coined money of any description was current in that province; and that it was the Emperor Altamsh whose silver coins furnished not only the prototypes of a long line of sequent Delhi mintages, but also the manifest introductory model of all Bengal coinages. After fully treating the various questions as to the artistic merits of the Bengal coins, their varying standards of weight and intrinsic value, and the relative rate of exchange of the precious metals inter se, under the different rulers of Muhammadan India, the author noticed, in conclusion, the historical bearings of these coins, in connection with the slender data furnished by Persian and Arabic writers of that period. Beginning with the celebrated Queen Regnant of Muhammadan India, Riziah, the daughter of Altamsh (A.H. 734), whose coins are the earliest that can be definitely attributed to a Bengal mint, the following reigns are successively represented in the series:-Rukn-uddín Kai Káús (A.H. 691), Shams-ud-dín Fírúz (A.H. 702), Shaháb-ud-dín, Bahadur Shah (A.H. 710), Mubárak Sháh (A.H. 737), Alí Sháh (A.H. 742), Ghází Sháh (A.H. 751), Ilíás Sháh (A.H. 740), Sikandar Sháh (a.H. 751), and Azam Shah (A.H. 791). The principal mintages were at the following cities, each of which served in turn as capital :-Lakhnauti (or Gaur), Fírúzábád (or Pandur), Satgaon (near Hooghly), Shahr-i-nau (or the rebuilt Gaur), Sunárgaon (near Dacca), and Muazamábád (a new capital of Eastern Bengal).

Jan. 29.-Sir E. Colebrooke, Bart., M.P., President, in the chair. Messrs. E. B. Cowell and T. C. Plowden were elected resident members. -A paper by the Hon. H. E. J. Stanley was read, "On the Poetry of Mohamed Rabadan, an Arragonese Morisco." The author stated that a MS. in the British Museum containing the poems of Rabadan was bought by Mr. Morgan, H.M. Consul at Tunis, at Testûr, in the Tunis territory, in the year 1719. There were then, according to Mr. Morgan, twelve villages or towns in the province of Tunis where the people spoke Spanish, and one in which they spoke Catalan. These people knew by heart, and were in the habit of reciting the poems of Rabadan, which were written in Spanish at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for the instruction of the Moriscoes, who, even at that time, a hundred and twenty years after arriving in Africa, and living as they did in the midst of an Arab population, continued to use the Spanish language. The principal portion of these poems is a history of the prophets, beginning with the creation of the world and going on to describe the deluge, the history of Abraham, the genealogies of Ishmael and Isaac, and the history of the other prophets, down to Hashim, Abdul Muttalib, and the Prophet, the description of whose death forms one of the best cantos in the book. Among the other poems in the volume, the writer mentioned with particular praise the history of the day of judgment. In point of literary merit, he said, these poems were of no mean order, but they were equally interesting to the philologist, on account of the Arabic words scattered over them, many old Spanish words now obsolete, and various other peculiarities. The Arabic words, of which several are used, which are now lost from the Spanish language, are so defaced that it is not always easy to recognize them; they are either religious or legal terms, such as almalaque, an

angel; alcursi and alarx, the Divine throne; alcafara, expiation; acidaque, dowry; alguali, a woman's legal deputy. As instances of the way in which from Arabic roots words were formed according to the rules of Spanish grammar and idiom, the writer mentioned the following: halecar, to create; halecado, creature; halecamiento, creation; azachdado, prostrated; taharado, purified; alcafanado, shrouded; alhijantes, pilgrims; allohador, the writer of the Alloh almahfúd, or heavenly prototype of the Koran. After the reading of the paper was concluded, Viscount Strangford made some further remarks on this little known and much-neglected chapter in the literary history of Spain, viz., Spanish poetry, by Morisco authors. The number of poets and prose writers of this class was, he said, by no means so inconsiderable as one might suppose; and besides Mohamed Rabadan and Abdulkerim bin Aly Perez, there were many other authors whose works were well worth collecting and editing. There was at present one scholar, the celebrated Spanish savant, D. Pascual de Gayangos, who had stored up all the information on the subject to which access could be had; but, pending the preparation of his collections and his literary researches upon them for publication, it was most desirable that an edition of Rabadan's poems from the MS. in the British Museum were undertaken by a competent scholar; "a task which would involve no difficulty, as they are in the Spanish character as well as language, whereas most other MSS. are in the Arabic character and Spanish language."

February 19.-Sir E. Colebrooke, Bart., M.P., in the chair.—E. Maltby, Esq., presented to the Society a series of large photographic views in Tanjore and Trivady, and the photograph, twenty feet in length, of an inscription around the basement of the Vimânam of the Great Pagoda at Tanjore. The inscription dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century, A.D., and is in the old Tamil language, and in a character bearing great resemblance to the Grantham, Malayalam, and, in some letters, to the alphabet of the Gujerati Plates.-A paper by Mr. E. Norris was read, containing "introductory remarks to a specimen of an Assyrian dictionary." The author stated that while assisting Sir H. Rawlinson in the preparation of Assyrian inscriptions for publication, he had got together a very large number of words. These he had arranged in the form of a dictionary, intended "to serve, at least, as a repository in which Assyrian students may jot down their difficulties, and find a page where they may look for help by collating passages containing the words they are investigating." He proposed to commence at once the printing of the whole dictionary, if the specimen given should be thought satisfactory. After adverting to the difficulties of the Assyrian syllabary, encumbered as it is by monograms, determinatives, polyphones, unpronounceable proto-Babylonian symbols, and varying orthography, the author said he had arranged the words according to the order of the Hebrew alphabet, taking no notice of inherent unwritten vowels, or of the complementary vowels following them, which serve, at most, only to lengthen the syllable. Accad or proto-Babylonian words would be generally rendered as if they were Assyrian, and left to take their chance in that form; with the exception of a few of frequent occurrence, whose

Assyrian equivalents are well known from vocabularies and variant readings. In conclusion, he mentioned that throughout the work a normal character would be used, as near to the older Assyrian forms as the disposable typographical arrangements would admit.-The reading of the paper being concluded, Sir H. Rawlinson said he could bear testimony to the great difficulties with which Assyrian lexicography was beset on all sides, passing at the same time a high encomium on Mr. Norris for his indefatigable zeal in grappling with them; and then gave an account of the Accad element, which largely enters into the composition of the Assyrian records, and vastly increases the difficulty of deciphering them.

Syro-Egyptian Society.-Feb. 13.-B. H. Cowper, Esq., in the chair.A communication from Dr. Hyde Clarke respecting the monument of Sesostris near Smyrna was read, the discussion upon it being postponed. A paper "On the Book of Daniel," by Samuel Sharpe, Esq., was then read. He considered all the promises as written after these events had happened, and therefore as so much history; and from those events he endeavoured to assign a date to each several portion of the book. Chapter i.-vi. contains the life of Daniel from his youth, under Nebuchadnezzar to the reign of Cyrus, king of Persia. Chapter vii. forms a second portion, which mentions Antiochus Epiphanes, and therefore must be as modern as B.C. 170; in this portion four great kingdoms are described under the figure of animals, which seem meant for Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece, unlike the four kingdoms in the former portion, which were Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece. Chapter viii. forms a third portion, which again mentions Antiochus Epiphanes, and may be of the same date as the second portion. Missing Chapter ix., in Chapters x., xi., xii., we have a fourth portion, which again mentions Antiochus Epiphanes, but is rather more modern than the last, as it mentions his being recalled from his invasion of Egypt, by the tidings that Parthia and Armenia have rebelled against him. Chapter ix. is the fifth and most modern portion, containing the celebrated prophecy of seventy weeks, or 490 years, which begin with the command of Cyrus that the Jews should return home and rebuild their temple, and end with the overthrow of their king, Aristobulus, the Jewish government being changed from a monarchy to an aristocracy in the year B.C. 53, about which time, according to Mr. Sharpe, this portion of the Book of Daniel was written.

Ethnological Society.-Tuesday evening, Feb. 27th, a meeting of the Ethnological Society was held in their rooms in St. Martin's-placeMr. Crawfurd in the chair.--The first paper read was by Colonel Rigby, formerly British consul at Zanzibar, on the Somali race, who occupy an extensive territory on the north-eastern portion of Africa, between the Straits of Babel Mandeb and Cape Guardafui, and extending as far south as the equator. These people, though their skins are quite black, differ in most respects from the negroes of other parts of Africa. They are a pastoral race, and possess large herds of cattle and sheep. They are generally tall and well made, their features express much intelligence, and are of the Grecian type, with thin lips and aquiline noses, and their hair

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is very thick and long. They have, indeed, none of the characteristics of the usual negro race, whom they affect to despise. The women are tall and well formed, and, when young, are very good looking. Though the people are Mohamedans the women are not secluded, but are treated as the equals of the men. The dress of the men resembles that of the old Roman costume. It consists of a white flowing robe wrapt loosely round the body, with one end thrown over the left shoulder. They are fond of wearing charms and amulets made of silver or amber. Both sexes pay great attention to their teeth, and constantly use as a tooth-brush a fibrous twig of a tree. They are bigoted Mohamedans, and in addition to the usual festivals they observe some that are supposed to be of earlier origin. The Somali are divided into various tribes independent of each other. Their arms consist of a light spear, a shield of rhinoceros hide, a long straight two-edged dagger, and a bow with poisoned arrows. The Somali language has no resemblance to the Arabic, but it is remarkable for its regular construction, especially as it has no written character. There are two genders of nouns, the plural is regularly formed from the singular; the verb has four tenses, and it is always last used in a sentence. Colonel Rigby considers the Somali an original, unmixed African race. discussion took place on the paper, in which Dr. Rònay, Mr. CarterBlake, Mr. Robins, and Mr. Crawfurd, took part. A second paper, by Mr. Crawfurd, was then read, "On the origin and progress of written language," with a view to illustrate the characters of the different races of men. The first attempts of man towards making a visible record of ideas, Mr. Crawfurd observed, must have consisted of pictorial representations of natural objects, as the most obvious and easy method. `Of this we have examples in its rudest form in the scratching on trees and roots of the savages of America, and in a more improved state in the pictorial writing of the Aztecs or Mexicans. The imperfect and untractable nature of symbolic writing must, however, have early presented itself to most nations, and accordingly two people only have persevered in it, and reduced it to a workable system-the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese, two wholly different races of man, far away from each other, and certainly ignorant of each other's existence when they adopted that clumsy and cumbrous form of writing. Vocal or phonetic writing, Mr. Crawfurd said, seems to have been invented as soon as such a state of society had been reached as allowed of the existence of a class that had leisure for meditation. The party that would soonest enjoy such leisure would naturally be that which had the spiritual direction of a people; and if we suppose letters to have been the invention of a priesthood, the art was in all likelihood at first confined to religious purposes, and came in time only to be extended to secular ones. It required, however, a considerable advance in civilization before a people could invent or adopt phonetic writing, and the absence of such writing among the ruder tribes of Hindostan, of the Indo-Chinese countries, and of the Malay and Philippine Islands, was adduced as an illustration. Nor had such a system of writing ever been invented by any people of America. African negro, who, possessed for ages of corn and cattle, of metals and good materials for clothing, has never invented an alphabet. Egyptians,

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Numidians, Nubians, and Abyssinians, on their own continent, have invented written language, but never a negro people. We must come, therefore, Mr. Crawfurd said, to the conclusion that the negro is an exception, arising from a peculiar stolidity. Even in their own country it is but rarely that negroes have adopted the letters of strangers; and beyond it they have done so only when under some degree of constraint or compulsion. But by far the most remarkable instance of a people who have failed to invent either symbolic or phonetic writing is afforded by the races of Europe. No race from the Euxine to the Atlantic, or from Greece to Scandinavia, he said, has ever invented an alphabet. It may be presumed that this may have arisen from the fact that no European race had reached that point of civilization at which written language is invented before the time in which a foreign phonetic writing was presented to them and adopted. That written language was the separate and independent discovery of many different nations, seems to be proved by the difference in the forms of the characters which represent them, the differences in the sounds which the letters represent arising from the necessities of the languages for which they were originally framed, and often even the disparity of their order or arrangement. Mr. Crawfurd adduced numerous illustrations in support of that position, particularly among the people of the East, and in conclusion of the paper he observed

"All the letters of mediæval and modern Europe, under whatever name or of whatever modification of form, are derived from the Latin alphabet. They have no high antiquity to boast of. The forefathers of the Montaignes, of the Corneilles, and of the Voltaires, had just begun to use the Greek alphabet in the time of Julius Cæsar; but the forefathers of the Shakspeares and Miltons, of the Bacons and Newtons, whose posterity was predestined to spread over the best part of America, and the whole of Australia and the islands of New Zealand, were at the same time as illiterate as are now the negroes of Ashantee, or as were the cannibals of New Zealand when Cook first discovered them." In the discussion of the paper, Mr. T. Wright observed that Mr. Crawfurd had omitted to notice the Runic alphabet, which was distinct from the Greek and Roman, and had been in use in the north of Europe before either the Latin or Greek letters had been introduced.—Morning Post, Feb. 28th.

Antiquaries.-March 8th.-Mr. Octavius Morgan, M.P., in the chair. -The Rev. J. Simpson, Local Secretary, exhibited Roman antiquities found at Brough, in Westmoreland, and offered some remarks upon them. A short paper on the same subject was read, contributed by the Director. Mr. Lewin read his paper on the "Mosque of Omar." Eminent architects who had inspected that building had assigned to it with certainty a Roman origin, not earlier than the first year of Diocletian, A.D. 284, nor later than the period of Justinian, A.D. 527. They had even gone further, and fixed as its actual date some time in the first half of the fourth century. So far, Mr. Lewin agreed with them, but he could not follow them in the theory that it was erected by Constantine, or that it covered the real site of the Holy Sepulchre. The church built by Constantine over the Holy Sepulchre was burnt by the Persians, A.D. 615, afterwards