188 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY DAVIDSON. 



thousand shells at a shilling, while in India 5000 represent a 

 rupee. The area over which they circulate is very large ; and 

 we have evidence that they were at one time used in countries 

 which have long since abandoned them. The familiar Chinese 

 cash, which are estimated by the string, is at least part proof 

 that shell money, which is usually strung for convenience sake, 

 was once the currency of the Celestial Empire, although the 

 cash itself is a survivor, not of this shell money, but of an 

 original knife money of which we shall hear later. The money 

 of the Solomon Islands consists of neatly worked pieces of shell 

 about the size of a shirt button. These are strung on strings 

 about four yards long, and are distinguished under the names 

 of white and red money. In the Caroline Islands shell money 

 circulates, not as shells, but as real money, without immediate 

 reference to adornment. The shells are chipped all round till 

 they form disks quarter of an inch in diameter, and then are 

 smoothed down with sand and pumice. The porcelain money of 

 China, and perhaps the clay tablets of Assyria and the seals of 

 Egypt, may be perhaps regarded as more developed forms of the 

 same kind of money. In other places shells of other sorts were 

 used. In early China perhaps, also, among the early Greeks, 

 tortoise shell was used, and in China to this day the phrase 

 tortoise shell is still used to indicate money.* 



The wampum of America is another instance of shell cur- 

 rency. It consisted of black and white shells polished and 

 fashioned into beads, and then strung in necklaces, etc. Black 

 ones were twice as valuable as white. Wampum wa so well 

 established as currency among the Indians that it was made 

 legal tender among the settlers, not that white men valued it as 

 ornament, but because it was in constant demand by the natives 

 and also because there was a scarcity of small coin. The unit 

 of wampum money was the fathom consisting of three hundred 

 and sixty white beads, and was worth about sixty pence. At 

 first wampum was legal tender only to the extent of 12 pence, 

 or the limit of the legal tender of bronze coin to-day. But in 



* Ridge way : op. cit., p. 21. 



