182 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
the white trader bags of copra or dried cocoanut kernel have 
come into general use.* The usual effect of such a contact of 
races has been the substitution of a corresponding manufactured 
article for the original commodity used by the natives. Thus, 
among the Pacific Coast Indians, blankets have become the 
medium of exchange in place of furs. Since all exchange is 
mutual, the civilized trader must abandon his natural medium 
of exchange and adopt the medium of exchange prescribed by 
the character of the trade. Thus, in the New England colonies, 
wampum, a form of shell money, and in French Canada, beaver 
skins, were used naturally in the trade with the Indians at all 
times ; and on occasion, owing to the scarcity in the colonies of 
small change, these articles were used as money between 
Europeans. Indeed, in many communities where money, as we 
know it, is, for one reason or other, scarce, commodities may 
come into use as money, not because the people know no better, 
but because they have no better. Thus, on the north-east coast 
of Newfoundland at this day, cod alone is currency.+ 
The natural currency of a community is that commodity in 
which its wealth mainly consists. In the hunting stage of 
society property consists in weapons of war and the chase, in a 
few simple, natural ornaments made of shells or teeth, and in 
the skins of animals, which serve for clothing, and for the cover- 
ing of the hut or wigwam. But as man advances in civilization, 
he succeeds in taming animals, whose flesh and milk form his 
foods, whose skins or wool form his clothing. This is the pas- 
toral stage in which a man’s wealth is reckoned by his herds. 
In the more settled agricultural stage, property consists not only 
of slaves and domesticated animals, but of dwellings and grain, 
and above all, of stocks of the precious and other metals, 
though indeed, in early history, all metals are precious. These 
later forms of wealth man has come to value according to his 
earlier standards of wealth; and there is every reason to believe 
that the original standards of value of metallic coins are based 
ou mere primitive ox and cow units. When man has come into 
*F. W. Christian. Geographical Journal, Feb., 1899. 
tLant: Cruising on the French shore Westminster Review, March,- 1899. 
