26 
researches have been carried on, constitute the greater portion of 
the mass of lignite. The Bovev Tracey deposit belongs to the 
early part of the Miocene or Middle Tertiary period, of which the 
Hempstead beds in the Isle of Wight are also British examples. 
Several plants are common to the Bovey beds and those at Hemp¬ 
stead, and among these is the Sequoia Couttsice , which forms almost 
the whole of the lower parts of the Bovey deposit; these lower 
beds and the Hempstead beds are therefore probably contempora¬ 
neous, and the upper Bovey beds may belong to the next later 
stage of the Miocene period. The leaf-beds of Mull, discovered in 
1851 by the Duke of Argyle, appear to be a little higher in the 
series of strata, although still belonging to the Miocene group, and 
corresponding with certain beds of that age in Iceland. The surface 
of the Bovey valley is covered by a bed of sandy clay, containing 
angular stones and gravel, which is termed by the workmen “the 
head.” This is of considerably later date than the lignitiferous 
deposit, containing leaves of the dwarf birch and creeping willows 
of Arctic latitudes, which give evidence of that period when all 
the northern parts of this island were submerged beneath an icy sea. 
Dec. 1 . —The Bev. John Kexeick read a “Notice of some 
Phoenician and Ancient Boman Coins still current in the Spanish 
Towns on the Mediterranean.” The coins described in this paper 
had been collected in the course of the summer by a friend of 
Mr. Kenrick’s while engaged in an excursion on the Mediterranean 
shores in pursuit of objects of Natural History. The ancient 
coins of Spain maybe divided into three classes:—those bearing 
Phoenician inscriptions and devices; those inscribed with so-called 
Celtiberian or Turdetanian letters ; and those which exhibit legends 
in the Boman characters. The collection contained only coins of 
the first and third classes. Two coins with Phoenician inscriptions 
are both of Malaga, the Malaca of the ancients. Ifalacli in Hebrew 
signifies salt; it probably had the same meaning in Phoenician, and 
we learn from Strabo, who remarks that the town had a Phoenician 
air, that there were establishments here for salting fish. The 
legend on the coins is M. L. K. T., or Malakat; the letters are 
Phoenician, and nearly identical with those of the old Hebrew 
alphabet. The last letter, tau , is in the form of a cross ; the word 
tau is used in Hebrew for a mark or sign put upon anything to 
distinguish it, and a cross is evidently the simplest of all marks. 
The tau of later Hebrew alphabets is more complex and not suited 
