20 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO J 7 13. 



began this undertaking, but could never see one of them ; though the bishop 

 of Bangor, who is very well skilled in British antiquities, told me, a relation of 

 his had one of Lhywelyn 'ab lorwerth, who was cotemporary with Richard I. 

 and King John. By the princes of Wales, I understand the British Princes, 

 from King Kadwaladr about the year 600, to the last prince Lhewelyn ap 

 GrufFydh, about the year 1280. I have found several of the more ancient 

 British coins ; of which you see divers figures in Camden. Mr. Nicholson 

 quotes Caesar for the Britons having no coins; whereas, on the contrary, Caesar's 

 words are, nummo utuntur parvo et aeneo: nor can I see any reason to doubt 

 of British coins of all sorts of metal, till it can be shown whose coins those are, 

 which Mr. Camden and other writers take to be British. 



The druid beads are generally glass. Since the last edition of Camden I 

 have met with two or three of them, having a snake manifestly painted round 

 them : so that I take it for granted, the ova anguina of the British druids, were 

 these glass beads ; though those of the Gaulish were the shells of the echini 

 orbiculati laticlavii. 



We searched the high mountain near Brecknock, called Y Vann uwch deni, 

 but found nothing in it new, nor any great variety of rare plants. The choicest 

 were sedum alpinum ericoides, in abundance; argemone lutea; rhodia radix; 

 muscus cupressiformis, and about half a dozen more of the common Snowdon 

 plants. Lysimachia chamaenerion dicta is a common plant (by the name of 

 Ihysie'r milwr, i. e. herba militaris) in the meadows through all the upper parts 

 of this county. We also met with sorbus legitima and sorbus torminalis (grown 

 to as great a height as the ornus) neither of which had ever occurred before in 

 Wales. But of all these topical plants I was surprised at none so much as the 

 capillus veneris verus, growing very plentifully out of a marly incrustation, both 

 at Barry island and Forth Kirig in Glamorganshire, and out of no other matter; 

 and also that gnaphalium majus Americanum should grow on the banks of 

 Rymny River, which runs altogether over iron stone, for the space of at least 

 12 miles, beginning near the fountain-head in a mountain of this county ; and 

 yet not a plant of it to be seen elsewhere throughout Wales. In a great lake, 

 called Lhyn Savadhan, I found a pellucid plant I had never met with before : 

 the leaves are extraordinarily thin and transparent, in form not unlike small dock 

 leaves; but the middle rib is continued beyond the extremity, so that each leaf 

 has a soft prickle at the end. We found there also the hippuris saxea, and two 

 elegant sorts of small leeches, which I suppose not described. 



The limestone of this county affords small glossopetrae and siliquastra ; but 

 they are but very scarce in comparison of the quantity found in Oxfordshire, 

 Northamptonshire, Berks, &c. The most considerable rarities it affords are 

 Fairy Causeways, which I call so in imitation of the Giants' Causeway in Ire- 



