IS76.] -^y*^ [Anthop." 



estimation of any Frenchman who might behold it, the coin of the realm 

 which he trod. 



It is, then, our oldest French "Colonial." Mr. Crosby may boldly 

 represent it as such in his next edition. No apology will be required. 

 Both he, indeed, and his predecessors, needed rather to defend (as he at- 

 tempts to do), or, in fact, avoid altogether, the introduction of the "Som- 

 mer Islands," (or Bermuda) patterns for shilling and sixpence, in a work 

 on the coinage of the United States, where they can have no just claim to 

 stand. 



With a few brilliant exceptions, our prominent numismatic collectors, 

 and even authors, have not been men of much research or of a wide range 

 of reading. They have delved with greater or less industry in a narrow 

 field ; and authorities, other than those in English, have not occurred to 

 them. Hence works of some rarity, like Le Blanc's Treatise on the 

 Coins of France, or of great commonness, like the New France of Charle- 

 voix, which latter, as we shall soon proceed to show, contains most satis- 

 factory corroboration of the American character of the coin of Louis 

 Quatorze before us, with a tolerably ample history of it, have equally 

 escaped their notice. As John Smith's History of Virginia, on the other 

 hand, includes a full account of the Sommer Islands pattern, and is a 

 familiar book, in English, they have, through a natural confusion of locali- 

 ties, inadvertently come to regard that coin as a United States " Colonial " 

 one. 



Moreover, this GLORIAM REGNI, or French - American piece of 

 Fifteen Sous, is a very rare coin, I infer from the first of the two French 

 authorities whom I have named — and I shall presently quote his exact 

 words — that only one hundred thousand livres' worth of 15-sous pieces 

 and 5 sous pieces, together, was struck in 1670, and none at any subse- 

 quent date. The "livre, " now obsolete, was one-eightieth less in value 

 than the present franc, and, like the franc, contained twenty sous. Per- 

 sonally, I know of the existence of only five specimens. I have had the 

 good fortune to obtain two, both in very fine condition, from two different 

 auction-sales of coins in Europe, and one of these I have now the honor of 

 presenting to the American Philosophical Society, with an accompanying 

 wood-cut made expressly for the illustration of this paper ; a third, seem- 

 ingly in a poor state of preservation, if we may judge from its heliotype 

 likeness in Mr. Crosby's work, plate III, No. 5, is in the cabinet of that 

 accomplished scholar and numismatist, William S. Appleton, of Boston ; 

 the fourth had, from its appearance, and the locality where I met with it, 

 in all probability been circulated in America. It was in the collection of 

 Mr. J. Myshrall, at Frederickton, New Brunswick, where I saw it in 

 1870, towards the end of the summer. It showed marks of rough treat- 

 ment, and must, I think, in passing from hand to hand, have reached, from 

 Lower Canada, the town where it came under my observation. The fifth 

 has been shown me since I began to write this communication, by its 

 owner, Mr. Henry Mott, at present of Brooklyn, but formerly of Montreal. 



