ONE-QUARTER OF A 1/4d.
ONE-THIRD OF A 1/4d.
NEW SOUTH WALES 15 PENNY PIECE.
[STRANGE KINDS OF MONEY.]
By Robert Machray.
There seems to be scarcely any nation or tribe, no matter how savage and barbarous, but has a money, or some kind of currency equivalent to money, with which it discharges its debts and pays for the articles it requires or covets.
Many of the specimens shown in the illustrations accompanying this article of moneys "current with the merchant" will seem strange enough, but it must be remembered that it was from the use of just such objects long ago that the highly developed monetary systems of the Western world have come.
A HALF-DALER PIECE, WHICH MEASURES THREE INCHES SQUARE.
Amongst the most civilised races gold and silver coin, or "bank-notes," secured by deposits of gold and silver or by Government guarantees, are the recognised media of exchange. Modern coinages exhibit many specimens of beautiful and artistic moneys, and the notes—bills, as they are called in America—issued by the Bank of England, the French, United States, and other Governments, are, if not exactly artistic, wonderfully ingenious devices for baffling the skill of the forger. But in savage countries the forger has no place, for the moneys there in use could not possibly be counterfeited.