Author of Contributions on "The Coins and Tokens of Ceylon"
(_Numismatic Chronicle_, _Vol. XV._); "The XVIIth Century Tokens of
Berkshire" (Williamson's Edition of Boyne's XVIIth Century Tokens);
"Berkshire Dialect and Folk Lore, with Glossary" (the Publications
of the English Dialect Society), &c., &c., &c.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON COINAGES FOR THE CHANNEL ISLANDS.

Before treating of the Channel Islands coinages in detail, it may be of
interest briefly to notice in order the various changes and the
influences which led to these.

The earliest inhabitants of the islands of whom anything is known were
contemporaneous with the ancient Britons of Druidical times. Jersey and
Guernsey are still rich in Druidical remains. The Table-stone of the
Cromlech at Gorey is 160 feet superficial, and the weight, as I have
made it, after careful calculation, is about 23-3/4 tons. It rests on
six upright stones, weighing, on an average, one ton each. In the very
complete work recently edited by E. Toulmin Nicolle[A] is the following
interesting note:--

"That traces of the old Northmen, which were once obscure, have now
become clear and patent; that institutions, long deemed Roman, may be
Scandinavian; that in blood and language there are many more foreign
elements than were originally recognized, are the results of much
well-applied learning and acumen. But no approximation to the proportion
that these foreign elements bear to the remainder has been obtained;
neither has the analysis of them gone much beyond the discovery of
those which are referred to Scandinavia. Of the tribes on the mainland,
those which in the time of Caesar and in the first four centuries of our
era have the best claim to be considered as the remote ancestors of the
early occupants of the islanders, are the Curiosilites, the Rhedones,
the Osismii, the Lemovices, the Veneti, and the Unelli--all mentioned by
Caesar himself, as well as by writers who came after him. A little later
appear the names of the Abrincatui and the Bajucasses. All these are
referable to some part of either Normandy or Brittany, and all seem to
have been populations allied to each other in habits and politics. They
all belonged to the tract which bore the name of Armorica, a word which
in the Keltic means the same as Pomerania in Sclavonic--_i.e._, the
country along the seaside."

[A] "The Channel Islands." By the late David Thomas Ansted, M.A., and
the late Robert Gordo