6o JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



produced in a very few minutes. The Bank and its offices, includ- 

 ing the printing rooms, for all its notes are printed on its own 

 premises, cover nearly three acres, and it employs in town and 

 country nearly 900 officials. 



Over ;^i 1,000 worth of silver is wasted every year in the course 

 of the circulation of the English silver coinage. Mr. Miller, a well- 

 known authority on money, weighed, in 1859, one hundred sover- 

 eigns coined in 1820, and found a loss in weight by circulation of 

 ;^i, 6s. yd. In the numberless handlings a shilling has to submit 

 to in the course of years, the loss arising therefrom becomes at last 

 sensible to the ordinary balance. Coins suffer also from abrading 

 each other when jingling in the pocket, and they are damaged each 

 time they are rung on a counter. Every minute particle of matter 

 removed in any way lessens the weight and makes coins look old, 

 and in the lesser pieces which are much used, this proceeds to a 

 marked extent. Several processes have been traced in England for 

 abstracting a certain portion of metal from coins without defacing 

 them ; one of these, which was attributed to Jews, being known as 

 '' sweating." This was done by shaking together in a leather bag 

 for some time a number of sovereigns, and then collecting the par- 

 ticles which the coins had lost. Another process was placing coin 

 in contact with sulphur or in its fumes, which covered the pieces 

 heavily with a coating which was subsequently removed by a chemi- 

 cal process, or by polishing, and which thus abstracted a certam 

 value without defacing the coins themselves. Plugging with base 

 metal and gilding or silvering the plug was another trick, and so 

 largely was the process of boring a hole in silver pieces carried on 

 that such bored pieces were finally refused ; and in the United 

 States no defaced coin will be taken in trade at any value what- 

 ever. 



A paper was read in November last (1889) before the Institute of 

 Bankers, in London, by Mr. R. H. Inglis-Palgrave, F. R. S., on the 

 note circulation of England and Wales, urging the re establishment 

 of paper money of the value of one pound. He alluded to the 

 new issue of postal orders for small sums, which, supplemented by 

 stamps when making up odd shillings and pence is required, as 

 shewing the demand for such currency ; and quite a discussion fol- 

 lowed on this subject, He said : " New South Wales, Victoria, 

 South and West Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, and New Zealand 



