Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 11.djvu/88

70 as introduced by Hilperic. The weight of this triens is a little more than 19 grs. It has been purchased for the British Museum. A representation may be seen amongst the Crondale coins given in the Numismatic Chronicle, vol. vi. p. 171.

By Mr. .—A rubbing of the sculptured head of a small stone cross, at present preserved in the collection of the Architectural Museum in Canon Row, Westminster. The fragment is 18 inches high, and about 14 inches wide at the head. The arms are of equal size, and dilated gradually, being very wide at their extremities, which are united together by a narrow fillet, the intervening spaces being pierced. In the centre is a small boss, the remainder of the disc being sunk, within a marginal raised ridge of about an inch wide, extending all round the arms. On the portion of the shaft still remaining is the commencement of a simple interlaced riband pattern. (See woodcut.) The fragment is about 6 inches thick, and the reverse is plain. It was found in 1810, in excavations at Cambridge Castle, where the curious early coffin slabs were found, of which drawings are preserved in Mr. Kerrich's Collections, Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 6735, fol. 189, 190, engraved in the Archæologia, vol. xvii. pl. 15, 16, p. 228. The fragment here represented came into the possession of the Cambridge Camden (now the Ecclesiological) Society, and was transferred with their collections to London. On the formation of the Architectural Museum, the Society presented it with several casts, &c, in aid of so desirable an object.

By Mr., of Cork.—A representation of a silver penannular brooch, dug up in 1853, about three miles south-east of Galway, and now in Mr. Hoare's collection. It was stated to have been found amongst the remains of a tumulus; the metal is of base alloy, the workmanship is curious, the extremities where the ring is divided being formed with circular ornaments, with a small central setting of a translucent substance, which Mr. Hoare believes to be amber. A third little boss of the same material ornaments the middle of the hoop. Around the circular terminations are set three crescents, and small heads of some animal, which has been regarded by certain Irish antiquaries as that of the wolf; but it bears more resemblance to the head and beak of a bird. The penannular portion of this curious brooch measures about 2 in. in diameter; the acus, which is formed so as to traverse freely round the ring, measures in its present state 4 in.; but it appears to have been longer. A correct representation of this brooch has been given in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1854, p. 147. This kind of brooch occurs in Ireland, remarkably varied in the elaborate character of its ornamentation, as has been well shown by Mr. Fairholt in his Memoir on "Irish Fibulæ," in the Transactions at the Meeting of the British Archæological Association at Gloucester, p. 89. The decorated ends of the hoop frequently assume a form termed a "lunette," as shewn by some of those examples and the bronze fibula found in co. Roscommon, figured in this Journal, vol. vii.