AUXILIARY EXCHANGE. 393 



our language curiously indicates by the word &quot; impecuni 

 ous,&quot; which, now meaning one who has no money in his 

 pocket, means literally one who is without cattle. And that 

 among the Romans cattle formed the first currency is im 

 plied by the remark of Mommsen that &quot; copper (aes) very 

 early made its appearance alongside of cattle as a second 

 medium of exchange.&quot; Among the Old English, too, oxen 

 formed the currency; and they long continued to do so 

 among the Celts of Wales. 



Instead of these large living masses serving only for large 

 transactions, there are elsewhere used kinds of food that 

 serve for smaller transactions. Dried fish in some cases be 

 come a currency, and there are people who use grain as 

 money. At Zanzibar &quot; in former times mtama, a species of 

 millet, was employed as small change.&quot; If under the head 

 of food we include nerve-stimulants, we may here add tea 

 brick-tea, as it is called in Mongolia, which, according to 

 Erman, is &quot; a mixture of the spoiled leaves and stalks of the 

 tea-plant, with the leaves of some wild plants and bullock s 

 blood, dried in the oven, and divided into pieces of from 3 

 to 3J pounds weight, of the shape of bricks.&quot; Referring to 

 this same currency, Prejevalsky says &quot; anyone, therefore, 

 desirous of making purchases in the market, must lug about 

 with him a sackful or cartload of heavy tea-bricks.&quot; A like 

 use is made of tobacco in the Sulu Islands. Says Bur- 

 bidge : &quot; The inferior Chinese tobacco is preferred by 

 the Sulus to their own produce, and is a regular kind of cur 

 rency in which almost all small payments may be made.&quot; 

 In some places condiments serve the same purpose, as in 

 parts of Africa. 



&quot;There is a deposit of rock-salt in the Quissama country . . . the 

 most curious thing connected with this salt is that they cut it into 

 little bars with five or six sides or facets, about eight or nine inches 

 long and about an inch thick, tapering slightly to the ends, and closely 

 encased in canework. These pass as money, not only on the river, but 

 in the interior, where they are at last perhaps consumed.&quot; 



