20 
The Secretary read a letter from the Secretary of the 
Royal Academy of Madrid, returning thanks for a copy of 
the Transactions. 
Sir William Betham read a letter from the Baron de 
Donop, of Saxe Meiningen, on the subject of the alleged 
discovery of the MS. Translation of Sanconiathon’s His- 
tory of the Pheenicians, by Philo Biblius.* 
Sir William Betham read a letter from Sir John Tobin 
of Liverpool, respecting the cast-iron ring money, found on 
board the wreck of a vessel, and exhibited at the meeting of 
the Academy in November :—the following is an extract. 
“On the subject of the schooner, Magnificent, which 
was lost somewhere near Cork, some time since:—she was 
bound to the river Bonney, or New Calabar, which is not 
far from the kingdom of Benin. The trade to these rivers 
for palm oil and ivory, is cotton goods, gunpowder, muskets, 
and a great variety of other articles ;—and among them ma- 
nillas, both of iron and a mixed metal of copper and brass, 
which is the money that the people of Eboe and Brass Coun- 
try, and all the nations in that neighbourhood, go to market 
with. On Wednesday next I will send you a manilla of 
each kind.” 
Sir John Tobin states the price of the copper manillas to 
be £105 per ton, and that of the cast iron £22 ; the former 
passes, therefore, for about five of the latter. They so per- 
fectly resemble the Irish antique, as to be scarcely distin- 
guishable except by the difference of the material. 
Sir William Betham also read a letter from Captain Ed- 
ward Jones to Samuel Hibbert, M.D., which the latter 
gentleman transmitted to him, with the sketches there al- 
luded to. 
* An extract from this letter will be given in the next number of the Proceedings. 
