196 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY DAVIDSON. 



to honor these tokens. Accordingly, in the reign of James I., 

 the striking of copper farthings was made a monopoly, and in 

 the spirit of the times given to a court favorite, Lord John 

 Harrington, who took unreasonable advantage of his opportuni- 

 ties. The circulation was encouraged in various ways with 

 disastrous results to the commerce of the country. But not con- 

 tent with the fraudulent profits made at the expense of the 

 commerce of the country, he caused large parcels to be shipped 

 to the colonies. The Pilgrim Fathers, however, would have none 

 of them ; and it stands in the records of Massachusetts on 

 " March 4th, 1634, at the General Court at New Town, brass (or 

 copper) fathings were forbidden, and bullets were made to pass 

 for farthings." 



But the useful metals could also be put to the more fruitful 

 use of serving as implements of industry, where their superiority 

 over stone and wood is no less obvious than when they are 

 fashioned into weapons of war. In Africa, which, owing to the 

 absence of native copper, never had a bronze age, but passed at 

 once into the iron age, we find still in full force the systems of 

 currency which have either completely disappeared, or have left 

 but indistinct traces elsewhere. There we find hoe money and 

 axe money in practically their original forms. Iron in its 

 natural state was a means of exchange in the Homeric age, and 

 the iron money of Sparta was probably traditional in origin, like 

 the Hindu reverence for the cow. But in Africa to-day iron is 

 an almost universal medium of exchange. On the west coast 

 the bar is the unit ; and all things are reckoned in " bars " 

 pretty much as they are reckoned in blankets among the Pacific 

 Coast Indians. Originally the bar was what its name denotes, 

 a bar of iron of fixed dimensions, one of the chief articles of 

 trade between the natives and the early European traders. Now 

 it has a conventional value, which, in Sierra Leone, is two shill- 

 ings and threepence. In Central Africa, among the Madis, 

 according to Dr. Felkin, " the nearest approach to money is seen 

 in the flat round pieces of iron which are of different sizes . . 

 . . They are much employed in exchange. This is the form in 



