INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE

Curious Currency. Norway even now uses corn for coin. The. skins of animals were the earliest forms of money. In India cakes of tea pass as currency, and in China pieces of silk. Sheep and oxen among the old Romans took the place of money. Oxen form the circulating medium among the Zulus and Kaffirs. ' , .-Tin to-day forms the standard of value at the great fairs of Nishni Novgorod. In the retired districts of New Guinea female slaves form the standard of value. Among some of the native Australians greenstone (jade) and red ochre form the currency. Chocolate Is still used in the Interior of South America for currency, as are cocoa nuts and eggs. Iron spikes, knives, spear heads, and brass rods* are employed in certain parts of v Central Africa. According to Adam Smith, It was not so very long ago that nails were used as a subsidiary coin in Scotland. ,Whales' teeth~are used by the Fijians, red feathers by some of the South' Sea Islanders, and salt in Abyssinia. The old Chinese gold coins were in the from of cubes, while the bronze werfe shaped like knives and mining tools. The Icelandic and Irish laws yet have traces of the use of cattle for money. Many Teutonic fines were paid in cattle. In the early colonial times of 1652 to bacco and tobacco receipts were legal tender ; corn and beans and codfish were also employed. The small, hard shell known as cowrie is still useci in India, the Indian islands, and Africa, in the place of subsidiary coin. According to Prescott, the money of the Aztecs and the nations in kin con sisted of quills with gold dust and bags of chocolate grains. Before the Introduction of coined money into Greece, or spikes of iron and ! copper were a currency, six being a drachm or handful. The Carthaginians had leather money, Bafbarossa, during his fight with Milan in 1188, Issued leather tokens, and so did John the" Good qf France in 1360. In the British West Indies, phis, a slice of bread, or a pir±ch of snuff have all a purchasing power, while on the' Afr ican coast axes are the accepted cur rency. 