398 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



A chief element in the conception of value, acquired by 

 ornaments as they pass into a currency, is the- consciousness 

 of labour expended either in making them or in finding 

 them. We are specially shown this by a case in which an ob 

 ject not ornamental is made valuable by the trouble be 

 stowed on it. Describing what is called the money-house in 

 the ]^&quot;ew Hebrides, Coote says 



&quot; From the roof of the hut were suspended eight or ten mats . . . 

 and under them a small wood fire was kept ever burning. In course 

 of time the mats become coated with a shining black incrustation . . . 

 The fire, it will be seen, requires very constant looking after ... A 

 man has, therefore, always to be kept watching these curious moneys, 

 and it is the time thus spent upon them that makes them of value.&quot; 



This instance makes it easier to understand that the precious 

 metals derive their values in but small measure from their 

 beauty, but derive it mainly from the difficulty of getting 

 them. It needs but to remember that in appearance alu 

 minium bronze differs scarcely at all from gold, but is worth 

 less in comparison; or again it needs but to remember that 

 only experts distinguish between the glittering but valueless 

 glass called &quot; paste, 7 and the glittering but immensely valu 

 able diamond ; to see that the measure of value is the amount 

 of labour spent in finding and separating. 



761. Before the precious metals, first prized as mate 

 rials for ornaments, could be used for a metallic currency, 

 fit modes of measurement had to be established. We have 

 seen that even while ornaments serve as money, their worth 

 is estimated by measurement : the strings of shells employed 

 are valued by their lengths as equal to one or other bodily 

 dimension. This method being inapplicable to metals, there 

 arose in its place a valuation by weight; which, of course, 

 became possible only after scales had been invented. But 

 units of weight having first been furnished by organic bodies 

 and multiples of them (as shown in the East by the use of 

 the carat, an Indian bean, and among ourselves by use of 



