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 Phoenicians, 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. 



