394 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



And Monteiro mentions the same use as occurring in Abys 

 sinia. 



Thus the primary requirement for a currency in its initial 

 stage, is that its components shall be of a kind subserving 

 desires common to all things which all want; and its 

 secondary, though not essential, requirement is that it shall 

 be divisible into approximately equal units. 



758. As means to sustentation there come, after things 

 used for food, things used for warmth. Among the Thlin- 

 keet sea-otter skins form their principal wealth, and circu 

 late in place of money; and where skins of other kinds are 

 worn they similarly serve as media of exchange. 



By more advanced peoples textile fabrics, and the mate 

 rials for them, are employed as currency. After describ 

 ing the extent to which, in the markets of the Garos, com 

 modities of all kinds are bought and sold, Dalton says : 



&quot;All of which articles, and thousands of maunds of cotton brought 

 in by the Garos, change owners in a primitive way without any em 

 ployment of the current coin of the realm.&quot; 



To which he adds that the Garos have &quot; bundles of cotton 

 weighing two pounds, the small change with which they 

 provide their wants.&quot; So that out of the most generally 

 sold commodity a unit of value has arisen. How this unit 

 has been formed is suggested by a statement concerning 

 another of the Indian hill-tribes. Among the Kookies cot 

 ton is mostly bartered to the Bengali ~bepdris for fowls: 

 &quot; each fowl being considered equivalent to its weight of 

 cotton.&quot; In Africa the cotton employed as money has be 

 come a woven fabric. Says Wilson in his Uganda &quot; Un 

 bleached calico . . . constitutes the principal article of bar 

 ter in the interior of Africa.&quot; Elsewhere he adds that this 

 cloth which forms the principal article of barter 

 &quot; is generally measured by the length of the forearm from the elbow 

 to the tip of the middle finger; . . . and I have known natives when 

 Belling cattle and other things to bring some big brother with an 

 abnormally long arm to measure their cloth for them.&quot; 



