52 DORSET SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TOKENS. 



courteous head of the coin department, however, saw at once the 

 necessity for a more useful if not a more scientific arrangement of 

 the large mass of tokens under his care, and proceeded without 

 delay to put that arrangement into action ; so that within a few 

 months after my first visit to the British Museum I was able to 

 thoroughly inspect those of the county of Dorset a county which, 

 coming early in the alphabet, was amongst the first to be re- 

 arranged. Long before this, no doubt, every other county has been 

 similarly dealt with. Another outcome of this re-arrangement was 

 the issue in 1885 by the British Museum authorities of a separate 

 publication containing a list of all the 17th century tokens in the 

 British Museum not already described in Boyne's work. 



"Whilst I am upon the subject of our national collections of 

 tokens, I hope I may be pardoned when I say that I think it is a 

 great pity that wider powers should not be given to those having 

 the care and superintendence of our coin departments in dealing 

 with private collectors and others wishing to exchange or purchase 

 duplicates from them. I understand that it is the practice for them 

 to be allowed to accumulate and then to be sold wholesale to the 

 dealers. The authorities are not allowed to exchange or sell 

 privately as occasion offers. I could, more than once, have offered 

 a very liberal exchange of duplicates with the public authorities, 

 but have been met with the above rule. It needs very little dis- 

 crimination to infer what a considerable advantage would result to 

 our public collections were this rule a little relaxed, and a little more 

 latitude in this respect allowed to the heads of these departments. 

 I understand that, as far as the Bodleian collection is concerned, 

 an attempt has been recently made to pass a new statute to that 

 effect, though as yet without success. It is to be hoped that those 

 having authority over the disposition of our public collections will 

 be led to deal more liberally with the coin-collecting section of the 

 public ; it will assuredly be as much to the ultimate advantage of 

 the national depositories themselves, as it will be a decided boon to 

 private collectors. 



