THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 193 
is proof as strong as the nature of the subject permits, that our 
present system of metallic coins are translations of the earlier 
cattle currency. The Greek talent of gold and the ox were 
undoubtedly equivalent; and the ox is of course the older 
standard of the two; and the small change of this commodity 
currency was likewise translated into corresponding silver and 
copper coins. We find the same equating, the presence of which 
we partly detect and partly infer in the Greek world, going on 
to-day among peoples which are just passing from the pastoral 
to the settled mode of life. 
When this change takes place man generally has some rudi- 
mentary knowledge of metallurgy ; and the agricultural products 
have not often formed a unit of value. We have local 
instances and temporary instances ; but these are by no means 
confined to the beginnings of the agricultural stage. They 
appear in colonial history almost as frequently as in semi- 
barbarous societies ; and are generally due, then and now, to a 
scarcity of precious metals. Wheat has some advantages as a 
standard of value over the precious metals, as those colleges at 
Oxford and Cambridge know to their advantage who were 
restricted in the reign of Elizabeth to corn rents; but as a 
medium of exchange agricultural produce has such obvious 
disadvantages that no people which was able to use the precious 
metals has ever systematically used grain and other produce of 
the earth. 
The metals are so much better suited than any other com- 
modities to serve as the medium of exchange that it was 
inevitable that they should rapidly supplant all other forms of 
currency, so soon as gold and silver and the others had come to 
possess the fundamental requisite in a medium of exchange, viz., 
that it should be an article in general use and demand. But 
the metals came but slowly to possess this fundamental requisite ; 
and we are certainly not justified in assuming that metallic cur- 
rency superseded all others as soon as man had discovered the 
means of mining and working the metals. On the contrary, it 
is certain that the older currencies remained in circulation long 
= 
Proc. & TRANS. N. S. Inst. Scr, VOL. X. TRANS.—M. 
