Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION II 

 Series III JUNE 1915 Vol. IX 



Presidential Address. 



By R. W. McLachlan. 

 (Delivered May Meeting, 1915). 



Gentlemen, 



When our General Secretary advised me that, as chairman of 

 Section II, I was expected to give an opening address, I concluded that 

 I could not do better than present one phase of Numismatics — my 

 favourite study. 



While money, with which the subject deals, is designed in the 

 main for the economic purpose of providing counters by which the 

 barter of commodities can be arranged between parties, often unknown 

 to each other, sometimes living far apart, it is possible to view it from 

 other standpoints. One of these, which may be styled the artistic, 

 deals with the art displayed in the designs, embossed by the makers, on 

 their metallic counters. This display is more notable in the money 

 of ancient Greece than on that of any other country. 



Another view point, from which the circulating medium of a 

 country can be studied, is the greater or lesser incidents of history 

 thereon recorded, either designedly or incidentally. Thus the coinage 

 of a people, as that of Rome under the Empire, may be truly regarded 

 as their condensed and enduring metallic history, or, as in the coins 

 of the same people under the Republic, a repertoire of their genealogy, 

 or, as in the money of Bactria, serve to reveal long forgotten and other- 

 wise unknown kings and dynasties. 



And further, from that of the numismatist, who takes up the 

 classification and arrangement of these counters chronologically, 

 geographically and politically; as well as economically, artistically 

 and historically. 



Now, as there are some here better able to speak on the economical 

 side of this question, and as the artistic side does not well come within 

 the province of this Society and as the numismatic side, dealing mainly 

 with technical details, will not prove interesting to laymen, I have 

 thought it best to take up the third of these phases, and, as the subject 

 is so extensive, to confine my remarks to 



