190 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
greater units of value. In Fiji, whales’ teeth were used instead of 
shells, and white teeth were exchanged for red teeth somewhat 
in the ratio of shillings to sovereigns.* In Africa ivory tusks, 
and in the Solomon Islands dog teeth, which are worn in neck- 
laces, express the higher values, while shells are used for the 
smaller. The currency of the Solomon Islands includes many 
different articles, and the value of each relatively to the others 
is carefully determined. The currency table, as set forth by 
Mir: Cooles: ist: 
10 cocoanuts = 1 string of white money. 
10 strings of white money = 1 string of red money, or 
= 1 dog tooth. 
10 strings of red money = 1 string dolphins’ teeth. 
1 fine woman. 
l 
good hog or 1 useful young man. 
10 strings of dolphins’ teeth = 
1 mable ring (for ornament) = 
When man becomes a worker in metals, the primitive shell 
ornaments are replaced by gold and copper, and silver; and 
much of the money used in Africa to-day is of this character. 
But man is a creature of customs, and the forms of his neck- 
laces did not change to utilize the peculiar characteristics of the 
new materials. Nuggets of native gold may have been here 
and there threaded on a string; but there is little doubt that 
man’s first attempt in metal working consisted in imitating the 
old shell ornaments, and in imitating those shell ornaments 
which had come to be used as money. In Siam there are silver 
coins in the shape of shells; and in China we have a copper 
coin known as a Dragon’s eye, which was fashioned in the shape 
of acowry. But long before the precious metals were coined, 
they were in circulation by weight, as they still are in the East. 
The commonest form in which the metals circulated was in the 
*Jevons: Money, p. 25. 
+For these details regarding the Solomon Islands, I am indebted to a note in an 
issue of the ‘* Popular Science Monthly,” which I cannot find again. In the same note 
it is said that rope ends, ornamented with red feathers, to be worn about the waist, are 
also used as money. 
