99 



^be ZvatfC'* anb Coin:*Meiobt0 Jfounb 

 at riDelanbra, 



The exceedingly important observation which Mr. May 

 has made of the relation between certain of the ancient 

 weights found at Melandra and the " Neath " or " Glaston- 

 bury " standard, and which he has explained in an article 

 now appearing in the Derbyshire Archoeological Society's 

 Journal, seemed to impose on the Editor of this Report 

 the task of taking stock of the Icnowledge we now possess 

 of this curious and interesting set of objects. Since 

 Mr. May undertook the first scientific enquiry into their 

 nature (in his article in the same journal, 1903), ten more 

 specimens have been added from the camp (their number 

 now reading 30) ; and, although his discussion then placed 

 beyond doubt the nature of some of the purely Roman 

 weights which formed part of the collection, by showing 

 their close connection with the weights of the coins used 

 at different periods of the Empire, many of the details 

 remained, as he frankly pointed out, in some obscurity. 

 My object in making this addition to Mr. May's two 

 articles was to define as precisely as may be how much 

 knowledge we possess of the nature of the weights, and to 

 separate as sharply as possible what was certain from what 

 was merely probable. But the results of a systematic 

 survey proved to be far more interesting than I had hoped. 

 The third Table printed below shows that the collection 

 gives us no less than seven certain denominations of the 

 Keltic standard (hitherto known only in the unit, its 

 double and quadruple), and thereby supplies a most 

 welcome confirmation of the discovery of that standard 

 itself, and of the text in an interesting passage of Caesar 

 (see below). 



