200 THE EVOLUTION OF 



tically usable article, and the latter of a token not 

 domestically usable. It is this last consideration that 

 is the test by which we can separate metal articles, when 

 used as a medium of exchange, into those that are 

 currency and those that are money. When the iron- 

 smelting Shans of Zimme pay their revenue in elephant- 

 chains, spear-heads, cooking-pots, and other iron-work 

 which they make, they are using currency : but when 

 similar Shans along the Mekhong use lozenges of ingot 

 iron for making payments, they are using a real money. 

 So also the usable iron hatchets or handbills of the 

 Nassau Islanders, found in use in 1792, were currency, 

 while the thin, i. e. imitation and useless, iron knives of 

 the Kachins and Shans of the Assam-Burma border of 

 about the same period were money. Thus, too, the gold 

 and silver boxes, bowls, and necklaces, and the quainter 

 and prettier gold and silver flowers, leaves, and even 

 trees of the former Shan, Malay, and Burmese tribute 

 formed a sort of currency and not of money. The 

 evidence is universal. The imitation knives, hoes, and 

 razors of China made of spelter, iron, and copper were 

 money, as were and are many metal articles among the 

 African peoples. Such were the Lomami and other 

 spear-heads, the plaques of iron, the copper ingots in 

 accidental crosses in Central Africa ; the imitation iron 

 adzes, axes, axe-blades and heads, spears and hoes, and 

 the copper, brass, and iron bracelets, known as manillas, 

 with a long descent historically, in the West ; the magnetic 

 iron hoes in the East. 



On the other hand, true currency is shown in such 

 articles as the following, which were used domestically 

 as well as pecuniarily : the hammered brass frying-pans 

 of the Nagas of Assam ; the salt cylinders of East Africa ; 

 the salt bars, quills and bags of gold dust, and rings of 



