208 THE EVOLUTION OF 



of exchange until its quality or fineness has also been 

 tested. An instance of accurate testing by natural form 

 and appearance for daily use occurs in the silver shell- 

 money of the Shan Native States of Burma. The form 

 of the snail-shell taken on by this money is held to be 

 partly artificial thus : Silver refined by the ordinary 

 process in a rough crucible will, when very nearly pure, 

 or what the natives call quite pure, effloresce, and if the 

 efflorescence is checked by cold water at the right 

 moment it will assume the shell form. So silver in that 

 form is looked upon as pure and the silver shells pass as 

 currency by weight. A parallel in a non-bullion currency 

 is found in Abyssinia, where the people test the bar-salt 

 currency for quality, i. e. assay it, by placing the bar close 

 to the ear and scraping the finger-nails along it. The 

 quality, i.e. the damage that may have been done to it, 

 is ascertained thus by its ring, just as our people will 

 ring coins for rough assay. Here the constancy of 

 human reasoning is very strongly perceptible. Assay 

 by appearance applies, too, in the case of the very 

 highly civilized invention of paper money or bank notes 

 where it is commonly used. In such countries an old 

 note, like the savage mat-money, passes better than 

 a new one, as being the more likely to be genuine, 

 because many people must have used it as such. 



Instructive as these instances are of the development 

 of thought and manufactured form, personally testing the 

 metal usually offered as money in the course of dealings 

 by the eye or ear or finger was too vague an operation 

 in the case of important payments. Resort by ordinary 

 people in such cases would naturally be had to an 

 expert examiner or assayer, and this necessity has led to 

 an extensive profession in the East, and indeed it may 

 be said everywhere, of assaying bullion for the public, 



