CURRENCY AND COINAGE 197 



exact parallel in the strings and beckets of flying-fox 

 hair and in the tridacna shell-ornaments of the South 

 Pacific. 



The progressive reasoning that has converted currency 

 into money has thus gone very far, but it is necessary 

 to go further still before the momentous transition can 

 actually take place. From Yule's edition of Marco Polo 

 we learn that on the salt-moulds already alluded to ' the 

 Prince's mark is printed, and no one is allowed to make 

 it except the royal officers.' In Russia, tea-bricks have 

 been stamped with something like a Government or 

 official mark. In these instances we have reached some- 

 thing not only very like money, but even corresponding 

 to stamped money, which two terms, as will be presently 

 explained, are not at all synonymous. But as both the 

 salt-mould and the tea-brick can be put to an ordinary 

 domestic use they are still currency and not money. 

 Here, again, the law of the constancy of human reasoning 

 comes prominently into view, for the reasons that led 

 to the stamping and officially marking the tea-bricks and 

 salt-moulds are precisely those, as we shall see presently, 

 that have led to the stamping and marking of coined 

 money. 



A clear instance of the exact point where currency 

 ends and money begins is the use of rice as a medium 

 of exchange in Burma, existing in my time there about 

 twenty years ago, and noted also by the Resident at 

 the Court of Ava in 1797. It was used in village 

 transactions in Upper Burma, but such rice was neither 

 food-rice nor seed-rice, but useless broken rice. In other 

 words it was a non-bullion token and so money, just as 

 the imitation hoes, hatchets, knives, and so on of the 

 Chinese and other peoples in various parts of the world 

 are tokens of currency, and so money. Another almost 



