16 On the Ring Money of the Celte. 
riously one within another ; they have been considered money, and are perforated 
laterally through in such a manner as to admit a thong of leather or cord to pass 
through them. They are of the old Celtic brass. Their weight also is of equal 
penny-weights. 
02. dwts. 
No. 1, the outside, weighs 7 9 
2, the second, weighs 3 18 
3, the centre, weighs 1 13 
Having been perforated, they are not so exactly balanced as the gold and silver, 
though they are very nearly of equal penny-weights, but just turning the scale. 
The smaller specimens, however, of the brass ring-money which are perfect, are 
quite as accurately balanced as the gold and silver ; of these I lay before the Academy 
eight specimens, and it is singular that, with one exception, they exhihit odd multiples 
of the unit of twelve grains. 
dwts. grs. 
No. 1, or the largest is 19 12 
ON. oy Ue 
Sy. -agasoC BASSCM Riveniclaclts cope al 
4, Selassie coy IY 
Ds RoncdS iy 10) 
6, treble rings ...... 8 12 
7, double rings...... Fe he 
8, dittokcasceseeess By al 
No. 5 alone consists of even penny-weights. I have weighed a great many of 
these rings, and found them, without a single exception, multiples of half a penny- 
weight. It would, indeed, be difficult to persuade ourselves that this circumstance 
could be accidental. The ring money, gold, silver, and brass, as Czsar tells us, was 
‘ad certum pondus ;” and that weight, all our specimens show, was formed on the 
same scale, or, perhaps, was derived from the same original as the Troy weight. A 
pound Troy of gold thus formed 480 rings, weighing each half a penny-weight, 40 of 
which were equal to an ounce. It is not easy to say whether their system was duo- 
decimal or decimal—from these specimens it might have been either. If we could to 
a certainty say their penny-weight consisted of 24 grains, we might conclude it was 
duodecimal ; and the coincidence of all the other fractional parts being so accurately 
Troy weight, and several of the specimens being of duodecimal multiples of the 
unit, and all consistent with with it, seem to lead to the conclusion, that it was the 
same ancient system from which the Troy weight was derived. 
To what remote period of antiquity do these singular facts carry us back! To 
many ages before the time of Cesar, or even Herodotus. The latter speaks, as I have 
observed, of the Lydians as the first who coined medallic money, at least six centuries 
