CURRENCY AND COINAGE 201 



virgin gold of Abyssinia ; the iron hoes, spades, and 

 barbed spear-heads of Central Africa ; and the brass and 

 copper plates and bar-iron of North America. Parallels 

 to these are found in the necklaces of red feathers and 

 of shell disks, and in the jadeite adze-blades of various 

 Pacific Islands. 



From all parts of the world, too, comes evidence of 

 the use of many kinds of local productions by savages 

 and rudely civilized peoples for the same purposes as we 

 use coined money, and of these productions having a 

 relative value for the same reasons as the metals have 

 amongst us : i. e. relative difficulty as to production or 

 relative rarity, showing once more the law of the constancy 

 of human reasoning, and in the case of the modern savages 

 the Law of Contact. As money there have been used 

 in the Southern Pacific Islands strings made of the fur 

 and even of the lower jaws of the flying-fox, and of 

 disks of shell carried in a purse, and the well-known 

 Navalae rings, which are made of white quartz. The 

 Californian Indians use the hawock money, consisting 

 of clam shell disks in strings measured by the foot and 

 yard. Relative values are clearly shown in the tooth- 

 money of some of the Pacific Islands, where certain teeth 

 of the dog, i. e. the rarer and more difficult to procure, 

 are worth from two to five porpoise teeth. Very high 

 value, owing to slowness and trouble in production, is 

 shown in the large bands of parrot feathers of Santa 

 Cruz. 



The well-known existence of the use of beads as 

 money covers the entire ground of monetary values. 

 The point to get into our heads here is that beads as 

 beads do not appeal to the savage and semi-civilized 

 man for any purpose other than ornament. As money 

 they appear to him as a mere question of kind and value, 



