The important and extensive commercial intercourse between Scandinavia and England, to which this so decidedly points, can also be traced in England itself. Oriental or Arabian coins, struck in the countries near the Caspian Sea, are dug up both in England and Ireland in conjunction with the very same kind of peculiar silver rings, and other ornaments of the same metal, that are also found with the Arabian coins in Scandinavia and Russia; nay, they are sometimes dug up, as in Cuerdale, in conjunction with coins of Danish-Norwegian kings and jarls; a fact which still further confirms the opinion that they were brought over to the British Isles by the Northmen. This connection with Arabia through the countries of Scandinavia may probably have brought to England, as well as to the North, such a mass of silver as enabled the Anglo-Saxon kings to mint that surprising number of silver coins, which appears at once in such forcible contrast to the want of silver in the preceding centuries. The ancient Britons had little or no silver before the Roman conquest. The Romans, who had large silver mines in Spain, certainly brought silver money with them into the British Islands; but after the overthrow of their dominion, a want of silver again prevailed, and continued, as the coins show, until far into the eighth and ninth centuries. Silver was consequently introduced into England and Scandinavia, generally speaking, about the same time; and there is undoubtedly far greater probability that it was brought into these countries in the same way—that is, from Asia through Russia—than that it should have come into England through the Moors in Spain; of whose caliphs there are very rarely any coins found in England, and between whom and the English the intercourse at that period seems to have been but very limited. In the treasure found at Cuerdale the rings and other silver ornaments were for the most part broken, and twisted, or even melted, together. Something similar has been observed in the treasure trove in the countries round the Baltic, and in Russia. This clearly proves that silver, as an article of commerce, was brought from Asia to the North, where it was melted and converted into ornaments and coins.