196 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
to honor these tokens. Accordingly, in the reign of James I, 
the striking of copper farthings was made a monopoly, and in 
the spirit of the times given to a court favorite, Lord John 
Harrington, who took unreasonable advantage of his opportuni- 
ties. The circulation was encouraged in various ways with 
disastrous results to the commerce of the country. But not con- 
tent with the fraudulent profits made at the expense of the 
commerce of the country, he caused large parcels to be shipped 
to the colonies. The Pilgrim Fathers, however, would have none 
of them; and it stands in the records of Massachusetts on 
“March 4th, 1634, at the General Court at New Town, brass (or 
copper) fathings were forbidden, and bullets were made to pass 
for farthings.” 
But the useful metals could also be put to the more fruitful 
use of serving as implements of industry, where their superiority 
over stone and wood is no less obvious than when they are 
fashioned into weapons of war. In Africa, which, owing to the 
absence of native copper, never had a bronze age, but passed at 
once into the iron age, we find still in full foree the systems of 
currency which have either completely disappeared, or have left 
but indistinct traces elsewhere. There we find hoe money and 
axe money in practically their original forms. Iron in its 
natural state was a means of exchange in the Homeric age, and 
the iron money of Sparta was probably traditional in origin, like 
the Hindu reverence for the cow. But in Africa to-day iron is 
an almost universal medium of exchange. On the west coast 
the bar is the unit; and all things are reckoned in “ bars ” 
pretty much as they are reckoned in blankets among the Pacific 
Coast Indians, Originally the bar was what its name denotes, 
a bar of iron of fixed dimensions, one of the chief articles of 
trade between the natives and the early European traders. Now 
it has a conventional value, which, in Sierra Leone, is two shill- 
ings and threepence. In Central Africa, among the Madis, 
according to Dr. Felkin, “the nearest approach to money is seen 
in the flat round pieces of iron which are of different sizes . . 
They are much employed in exchange, This is the form in 
