52 
COINAGE OP TRAVANCOEE. 
ly re-established. Its operations are now conducted within 
the Fort at Trevandrum. 
Silver was formerly procured from Bombay in Rupees, 
afterwards dollars and other silver coins were bought up. 
These are melted in clay crucibles, which are each used 
but once, then ground to powder, and the atoms of precious 
metal which adhere to the clay remelted and carefully 
collected. The molten silver is suddenly poured into cold 
water, where it falls into grains and dust. These are weigh- 
ed ont in delicate scales to the exact weight of a chuckram, 
and the separate quantities thrown into small cavities 
in a large earthen plate which contains several thousand 
holes of the proper size closely arranged on its surface. 
The plate with its whole contents, being put into the 
furnace is exposed to a high temperature for three hours 
and a half so that the grains of metal are fused and formed 
into separate globules, of Avhich there raay be 3,000 on a 
single plate. When cooled these are taken out and 
punched by hand into cliuckrams, one of the dies being 
firmly imbedded in a stone underneath the coin and the 
other die or punch held in the workman's hand. Two men 
will make 20,000 chuckrams in a day. 
For fanam coins good presses with feeding machinery 
were procured from England and each strikes olf 8,000 
coins in a day. The acid of tamarind fruit is used for 
cleansing the coins. 
Copper is purchased in sheets and melted in a similar 
way, but double the time is required for its fusion. The 
copper globules are partially flattened by a single blow of 
a liiiniuu'r previous to the oprration of stamping. 
The teclmical mint term " touch "', from the touchstone 
used for testing the fineness, appears to be used to define 
the proportion of alloy iu coins by the number of decimals 
compared to au integer of pure metal. Thus " 8 touch " 
