condemned, as the public prefer something smaller for the pocket. It was consequently recalled and specimens only exist in collections. 1849. The florin-one-tenth of a pound-was issued of a similar device; but people were scrupulous-it had not the charm of D.G. and it would not sound if rung; so that was followed by one a little larger in circumference, thinner, and bearing the absolutely necessary "Dei Gratia." This piece was issued as a first step to decimal coinage; but as the Committee of the House of Commons was assured that it is easier to divide by 4, 12 and 20 than 10, 10, 10, and the opinion having great weight, we have not progressed further toward the rational and civilized end-the adoption of tha system which has taken so much hold on the modern world. The new issue of the bronze coinage in place of the mongrel copper currency, in 1860, is too recent to require any remarks, except perhaps that, with this as with all the rest of the coinage, there is vast room for an improvement in design. The double sovereign or two-pound piece, which was first issued in the reign of Henry VIII, ceased to be coined afterwards till the reign of Charles II, when it appeared in company with the five-pound piece. These larger denominations of the gold currency have been issued by every monarch since; but there being now no demand for them, they, like the Gothic crown, only exist in collections. In this paper my object has been to give a general history of the subject. The various mint marks, legends, origin of names given to the different pieces, the "reason why" of the multitudinous inscriptions are too numerous for one paper. In concluding this short outline of a branch of our country's history, so important and interesting, but at the same time studied and understood by comparatively so few of our countrymen, I shall call attention to a proclamation, making the last "alteration" in the currency, which appeared in the Gazette of the 6th February of this year. It declared all sovereigns and their halves, coined at and issued by Her Majesty's Colonial Mint at Sydney, New South Wales, to be current in Great Britain at par: hitherto they had been taken at-first sixpence and later threepence loss; a great injustice, not only to the mint of issue-which coined by the Royal consent, and therefore virtually on the same basis as that on Tower Hill--but also to those of Her Majesty's subjects who arrived in this country from that colony: they took these coins, issued by Royal proclamation at twenty shillings, in Australia; they arrived in England and could only get 19s. 6d. or 19s. 9d., which loss became very serious. These grievances the proclamation referred to abolished, and put the Australian sovereign at its right value. NOTABILIA OF THE ARCHEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MERSEY DISTRICT DURING THREE YEARS, 1863-4-5. Compiled by Mr. Henry Ecroyd Smith. PART I. An attempt is made in the following pages to offer a retrospective compendium of the rarer productions of our immediate neighbourhood, in Lancashire and Cheshire, during the past three years, in initiation of an annual report and record for the volumes of the Transactions of the Historic Society. The compiler has been induced to undertake the experiment from a conviction, shared in by valued friends, that the Natural History of the District has scarcely had its due position at the meetings and in the archives of the Society. The local Naturalist's Scrap Book* did not, unfortuately, complete an eighteen months' existence; and whilst doubtlessly useful to some extent, it was issued in a form unsuited for a permanent source of reference of the noticed productions of the locality, although contributed to by some of our first naturalists. Its main records of discoveries, with other points of interest, will be found here reproduced, under the respective headings of Botany, Fauna, Ornithology, Entomology, or Conchology, with additional communications from various well-known naturalists, whose disinterested and most kindlyvouchsafed assistance the compiler takes this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging. Far from wishing to monopolize the compilation of such a report, he will be only too glad to * Born April, 1863; expired August, 1864. surrender the several departments to recognized students in these, to some of which he only stands in the relation of amateur. As regards Archæology, the circumstances are somewhat different; but like all the shorter notices in natural history the responsibility attaching to his description of the various antiquarian remains devolves wholly upon the writer. It is essential to state that the "district" named is by no means limited to the arbitrary and most unsatisfactory one hitherto nominally retained, viz., nine miles round Liverpool or Woodside, which bound has been overstepped, at one time or another, by almost every contributor to the Scrap Book, the Editors of which ultimately added even a portion of Wales to their previously contracted limits! For the sake of argument, however, would any stranger to the neighbourhood imagine that the "Liverpool district," in this stricter sense, absolutely included an extent of land in a neighbouring county some sixteen miles in length? The more natural, comprehensive, and yet simple term used in these pages is, "Mersey district," (although it unavoidably encroaches upon the Dee shore,) which in general terms stretches from Warrington downward to the sea-board, there embracing Southport on the north and Hilbre upon the south. ARCHEOLOGY. Apart from the picturesque moated halls of the gentry, erected in the Tudor or Stuart period, the antiquities of the Mersey district have never made any great local display. The vestiges of its ancient erections existing in situ, so far as known, are, with little exception, confined to traces of one or two Roman stations-remains, mostly very meagre, of half-adozen religious houses and the rude foundations of the houses of long extinct villages once flourishing upon the sea-board, as that of MEOLES, ancient Formby and the name. less one upon the island of Hilbre. Perhaps the most interesting discovery of the past three years is that of Roman salinæ or salt works near the Weaver, the particulars of which have been kindly communicated by Dr. Kendrick of Warrington, to whose exertions the public are mainly indebted for the preservation of a perfect evaporating cistern and fragments of others, now deposited in the museum of that town. These relics substantiate the fact of the local production of salt from brine, for the past sixteen centuries, inasmuch as the "wyches" or salt springs of Cheshire, as well as those of Droitwich, are known to have been worked during the Saxon and early English periods. The small coin finds by Otterspool have come too lately to the ear of the compiler to receive the attention and investigation they deserve; but he yet hopes to track the report of the later one to its source and possibly secure some of the dispersed pieces. The annual antiquarian yield of the Cheshire shore which, for some years, had been diminishing, has lately increased. somewhat both in volume and interest, although infinitely below the harvest which might have been secured during the early part of the present century; from how much earlier a date it were very interesting to know, but as vain to guessno published record (save the finding of the old burial place on the Leasowe shore) appearing before 1846. Coins at Otterspool. About the commencement of the year 1863, a gardener named Wright, now living at Wavertree, but formerly in the employ of the late Oliver Holden, Esq., upon his beautiful grounds bordering the creek of Otterspool, found here a number of coins. He was engaged in "stub"bing up" an old arbutus tree, when he observed some small circular rusty pieces of metal clinging to its roots; but as these were evidently neither of silver nor gold he merely |