5 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ganized a system of instruction in technology of arts and manufact- 

 ures, for persons actually employed in factories and workshops, who 

 desired to extend and improve their knowledge of the theory and 

 practice of their particular avocations; ' and a considerable subsidy 

 was liberally granted in aid of the efforts of the Society by the Cloth- 

 workers' Company. We have here the hopeful commencement of a 

 rational organization for the promotion of excellence among handi- 

 craftsmen. Quite recently other of the livery companies have deter- 

 mined upon giving their powerful and, indeed, almost boundless aid 

 to the improvement of the teaching of handicrafts. They have al- 

 ready gone so far as to appoint a committee to act for them ; and I 

 betray no confidence in adding that, some time since, the committee 

 sought the advice and assistance of several persons, myself among the 

 number. 



Of course, I cannot tell you what may be the result of the delibera- 

 tions of the committee ; but we may all fairly hope that, before long, 

 steps which will have a weighty and a lasting influence on the growth 

 and spread of sound and thorough teaching among the handicrafts- 

 men 2 of this country will be taken by the livery companies of London. 

 Fortnightly Review. 







THE DEBASEMENT OF COINAGES. 



By E. E. LELAND. 



IN primitive days the parties to a trade had in every case first to 

 agree as to the quantity and quality of the articles to be exchanged. 

 When gold and silver first made their appearance in the list of com- 

 modities they were, along with other metals, in an unfashioned state, 

 and the processes of barter were carried on with them precisely as 

 with more bulky and inconvenient articles, so that at each trans- 

 fer it became necessary to determine their quality and quantity, that 

 is, their purfty and weight, by the crude methods which then ob- 

 tained. Such is still the case among some of the far-away, half-civil- 

 ized nations, and in the early days of California and Australia gold- 

 digging, " nuggets " and " dust " were in common use as currency. 



With all the perfection of modern scientific appliances the work 

 of assaying is one of great difficulty and nicety, and it must have been 

 impossible for primitive merchants to reach anything but the rudest 

 approximations. To do even this involved a great deal of trouble and 

 loss of time, so that the necessity of devising some means by which 



1 See the "Programme" for 1878, issued by the Society of Arts, p. 14. 



2 It is perhaps advisable to remark that the important question of the professional 

 education of managers of industrial works is not touched in the foregoing remarks. 



