THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY DAVIDSON. 193 



is proof as strong as the nature of the subject permits, that our 

 present system of metallic coins are translations of the earlier 

 cattle currency. The Greek talent of gold and the ox were 

 undoubtedly equivalent ; and the ox is of course the older 

 standard of the two ; and the small change of this commodity 

 currency was likewise translated into corresponding silver and 

 copper coins. We find the same equating, the presence of which 

 we partly detect and partly infer in the Greek world, going on 

 to-day among peoples which are just passing from the pastoral 

 to the settled mode of life. 



When this change takes place man generally has some rudi- 

 mentary knowledge of metallurgy ; and the agricultural products 

 have not often formed a unit of value. We have local 

 instances and temporary instances ; but these are by no means 

 confined to the beginnings of the agricultural stage. They 

 appear in colonial history almost as frequently as in semi-- 

 barbarous societies ; and are generally due, then and now, to a 

 scarcity of precious metals. Wheat has some advantages as a 

 standard of value over the precious metals, as those colleges at 

 Oxford and Cambridge know tjo their advantage who were 

 restricted in the reign of Elizabeth to corn rents ; but as a 

 medium of exchange agricultural produce has such obvious 

 disadvantages that no people which was able to use the precious 

 metals has ever systematically used grain and other produce of 

 the earth. 



The metals are so much better suited than any other com- 

 modities to serve as the medium of exchange that it was 

 inevitable that they should rapidly supplant all other forms of 

 currency, so soon as gold and silver and the others had come to 

 possess the fundamental requisite in a medium of exchange, viz., 

 that it should be an article in general use and demand. But 

 the metals came but slowly to possess this fundamental requisite ; 

 and we are certainly not justified in assuming that metallic cur- 

 rency superseded all others as soon as man had discovered the 

 means of mining and working the metals. On the contrary, it 

 is certain that the older currencies remained in circulation long 

 PROC. & TRANS. X. S. INST. Sci., VOL. X. TRANS. M. 



