Tue paper by Dr. Bushell, read on Monday at the meeting of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, on the coins of the present dynasty, was one of very great interest and importance. It was of course impossible to present more than certain portions of the paper to the audience, but the fragments given proved thnt it was a contribution of yo inconsiderable value to our knowledge of a curious and perhaps somewhat neglected subject. In the first. number of the journal of the Society published in 1858, and now, we believe, very difficult to procure, there is a paper by Mr. A. Wylie on the coins of the Ta-tsing, or present dynasty of China, which is admirable, we believe all numismatists admit, as fav as it goes. So many additional varieties, however, have been discovered since that there was ample room for Dr. Bushell to give us the result of his researches. Without going over ground. previously traversed, he has collected, arranged and described his specimens, and the result is a definite gain tothe study of Chinese numismatics.
Some coins, of which tracings were presented on Monday night, were from the mints of Mahomedan cities of Chinese Turkestav, the names of which they have on the reverse in Manchu tells us that paper money was formerly issued in immense quantities under the Mongol Dynasty, and, centuries later, in the third year of Hsien Feng [1853] when the largo copper tokens were coined, the issue of paper money was also revived, cash notes and silver notes were issued by the Board of Revenue, and forced into circulation by paying part of the salary of officials in the new currency, and by compelling the banks and largo pawnbroking establishments to accept it in lieu of more solid money. The value of these notes, however', depreciated rapidly, until in 1861 they were sold by Datch auction in the streets of the capital at a discount of 97 per cent. The cash wotes are of four denominations, equivalent to 500, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 cash respectively. They are printed from wood blocks in blue ink on thick whitish paper, and are adorned with a mystic representation of two dragons fighting for a pearl. Very stringent laws are enforced against all those who counterfeit the paper of the dynasty, which is guarded with the same care as the metal currency. There is a passage in Lord Macanlay's history, which is perhaps oftener quoted than any other, in which he says that "it may well be doubted whether all the misery which had been inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.