188 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
thousand shells at a shilling, while in India 5000 represent a 
rupee. ‘Tne area over which they circulate is very large; and 
we have evidence that they were at one time used in countries 
which have long since abandoned them. The familiar Chinese 
eash, which are estimated by the string, is at least part proof 
that shell money, which is usually strung for convenience sake, 
was once the currency of the Celestial Empire, although the 
cash itself is a survivor, not of this shell money, but of an 
original knife money of which we shall hear later. The money 
of the Solomon Islands consists of neatly worked pieces of shell 
about the size of a shirt button. These are strung on strings 
about four yards long, and are distinguished under the names 
of white and red money. In the Caroline Islands shell money 
circulates, not as shells, but as real money, without immediate 
reference to adornment. The shells are chipped all round till 
they form disks quarter of an inch in diameter, and then are 
smoothed down with sand and pumice. The porcelain money of 
China, and perhaps the clay tablets of Assyria and the seals of 
Egypt, may be perhaps regarded as more developed forms of the 
same kind of money. In other places shells of other sorts were 
used. In early China perhaps, also, among the early Greeks, 
tortoise shell was used, and in China to this day the phrase 
tortoise shell is still used to indicate money.* 
The wampum of America is another instance of shell cur- 
rency. It consisted of black and white shells polished and 
fashioned into beads, and then strung in necklaces, ete. Black 
ones were twice as valuable as white. Wampum was so well 
established as currency among the Indians that it was made 
legal tender among the settlers, not that white men valued it as 
ornament, but because it was in constant demand by the natives 
and also because there was a scarcity of small coin. The unit 
of wampum money was the fathom consisting of three hundred 
and sixty white beads, and was worth about sixty pence. At 
first wampum was legal tender only to the extent of 12 pence, 
or the limit of the legal tender of bronze coin to-day. But in 
Ridgeway : op. cit., p. 21. 
