AUXILIARY EXCHANGE. 399 



the grain of wheat as the basis of our system) definitely 

 weighed portions of gold and silver became units of value. 

 For a long time such portions of metal were habitually 

 tested by the scales, and in some countries always continued 

 to be so. 



The Egyptians never relieved themselves from the inconvenience 

 of weighing every ring of gold or silver spent in purchases at the 

 market, and never hit on the expedient of coinage. &quot; 

 Hebrew traditions show us incipient transitions from orna 

 ments to currency and the estimation of value by weight 

 a practice doubtless derived from the Accadians. We see 

 this when Abraham presented to Rebekah &quot; a golden ear 

 ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets ... of ten 

 shekels weight of gold: &quot; and again, when buying the cave 

 of Machpelah, he &quot; weighed to Ephron the silver which he 

 had named . . . 400 shekels of silver, current with the 

 merchant.&quot; In later days, the shekel (equivalent to the 

 weight of twenty grains or beans) acquired an authorized 

 character: there were shekels &quot; after the king s weight &quot; 

 an Assyrian expression. This implies a step towards coin 

 ing, subsequently reached; since we must assume that one 

 of these authorized shekels bore some mark by which its 

 character was known. 



Passing now to later times, and making allowance for the 

 extent to which, in mediaeval Europe, Roman usages influ 

 enced men, we may recognize essentially the same facts. In 

 ancient Frankish days there arose again these same rela 

 tionships between the ornament, the weight, and the current 

 metallic unit of measure. In the Merovingian period 



The collar and the armlet, the Celtic torque, the Teutonic ~beag were 

 at one time familiar, in a certain sense, as a currency throughout the 

 North. The beag was originally the ornament of the Gordr, or member 

 of the sacred race, whenever he officiated at a sacrifice.&quot; 

 It would appear that the beag had &quot; a fixed legal value,&quot; and 

 was &quot; as much a recognized type of value in its way as the 

 ore or pound.&quot; At the same time, uncoined bullion was also 



