272 Butler—The Codfish in American History. 
the first half of the present century. This fact is shown by the 
rates of postage which up to 1845 were fixed in conformity to 
the size of those bits. We see on old letters the postage 
marked 6^ cts. because the smallest Spauish silverling passed 
at that value. Otherwise, full postage could not be fully paid 
as no quarters of a cent were minted. Economical men used to 
pay in copper, and thus saved four per cent, on their outlays. 
During 23 years before 1828 not one half dime was issued from 
the U. S. mint, and the whole number before issued was but 
little over a quarter of a million, (265,543); $13,279 in other 
American coins were struck off on a similarly scanty scale. 
Thus we owe our currency formally adopted by congress in 
1786, but used in business long before, to codfish. It brought us 
the coin dollar as its monetary unit, and the name dollar with 
all its divisions —■ and some that still survive, as really as 
though every cod had held in his mouth a silverling like the fish 
in which St. Peter found the stater for paying his tribute and 
his Master’s. 
The minor relations and uses of our great Yankee fish are not 
to be despised. 
The cod is of voracious appetite — and is even less fastidious 
than the ostrich. It has hence been praised as the great col¬ 
lector of deep-sea specimens otherwise unattainable by natural¬ 
ists. Many are the rare and curious shells which have been 
obtained from its capacious and omnivorous stomach. 
The oil of cod-fish has often proved more precious than its 
flesh. No animal oil has been found so digestible as that ex¬ 
pressed from the livers of cod. Nothing more enriches blood 
with red corpuscles or adds more to the store of fat. As a rem¬ 
edy for rheumatic diseases and general debility its therapeutic 
excellence has been long known and appreciated. Its importance, 
however, as a specific for pulmonary consumption it was re¬ 
served for a recent period to discover, or at least to exploit to 
its fullest and best applications. The medicinal virtues of cod 
can be here only hinted at. Were half of them declared in this 
paper it would be accounted a quack advertisement in disguise. 
Let me fall under no such suspicion. 
In Puritan ages codfish yielded a dish too dainty to be sent 
