102 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 5° 



currency gradually followed. With that displacement the term 

 "picayune" as a monetary designation went quickly out of use, 

 but it has a curious survival in the name of the New Orleans 

 Picayune newspaper, that name having been given to it to indicate 

 its price per copy, which was then an unusually low one. The 

 term "bit," however, continued in colloquial use, although no 

 single coin remained in circulation to which -it could be applied. 

 Its application, therefore, was only to multiples of the bit value, 

 the quarter-dollar being designated as two bits, the half-dollar, four 

 bits, and three-quarters of a dollar, six bits. 



The region in which the term ' ' bit ' ' has prevailed as a specific 

 name for the Spanish real and for one- half of the quarter dollar 

 may be designated as the States of the Great Mississippi drainage 

 system and the contiguous States along the Gulf border. The 

 emigration which crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains 

 in the closing years of the fifth decade of the last century traversed 

 that region and carried with it the term "bit" in its monetary 

 sense to the Pacific coast. The result has been that, in the multiple 

 form just mentioned, that term is now even more prevalent there 

 than it is in any other part of our country. 



The most remarkable case of the adaptive use of monetary terms 

 in the United States which have become archaic, if not obsolete, is 

 that which occurred in New England. It was there that the 

 widest application of the terms of the English monetary system was 

 made to American and Spanish values, and there also that those 

 terms became dialectic in character. In Bristol county, Massachu- 

 setts, up to my thirteenth year, those terms were as familiar to me 

 as household words, for my parents and all our neighbors habitually 

 .used them. My recollection of them is as distinct as is that of the 

 terms "bit" and "picayune," which I also used in common 

 with the people of the Mississippi valley for more than twenty years 

 afterward. 



The following table shows the archaic terms which were used in 

 New England, and which resulted from the former use there of the 

 English monetary system and the reduction of values of the bills 

 of credit. The terms cent, half-dime, and dime are of course 

 added to the table from our national coinage, but the remaining 

 terms are locally characteristic. The latter were all in common use 

 there during colonial time and also for nearly or quite fifty years 

 after the establishment of our national mint. Now, however, they 

 have gone entirely out of practical use. 



