Answer.—The earliest coinage that can be called American, in the sense of Anglo-American, was ordered by the original Virginia Company, only five years after the founding of Jamestown. The coin were minted at Somers Islands, now known as the Bermudas. For a long while the standard currency of Virginia was tobacco, as in many of the early settlements of the Northwest it was beaver skins, and other pelts reckoned as worth such a fraction of a beaver skin or so many beaver skins. The accounts of the fur traders and pioneers in their dealings with the Indians were kept in beaver skins instead of coin until some years after the opening of this century, and in some parts of the Dominion of Canada they are still kept so. In 1645 the Assembly of the Virginia Colony, after a preamble reciting that, “It had maturely weighed and considered how advantageous a quoine would be to this colony, and the great wants and miseries which do daily happen unto it by the sole dependency upon tobacco,” provided for the issue of copper coins of the denominations of twopence, threepence, sixpence, and ninepence; but this law was never carried into effect, so the first colonial coinage of this country was that struck off by Massachusetts under the order of the General Court of that colony, passed May 27, 1652, creating a “mint howse” at Boston, and providing for the mintage of “12 pence, 6 pence, and 3 pence pieces, which shall be for forme flatt, and stamped on the one side with N. E., and on the other side with XIId., VId., and IIId., according to the value of each peece.” In 1662, from this same mint appeared the famous “pine tree shillings,” which were two-penny pieces. This mint was maintained for thirty-four years. In the reign of William and Mary copper coins were struck in England for New England and Carolina. Lord Baltimore had silver shillings, sixpences, and fourpences made in England to supply the demands of his province of Maryland. Vermont and Connecticut established mints in 1785 for the issue of copper coin. New Jersey followed a year later. But Congress had the establishment of a mint for the confederated States under advisement, and in this same year agreed upon a plan submitted by Thomas Jefferson, and the act went into operation on a small scale in 1787. After the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1789 all the State mints were closed, as the Constitution specifically places the sole power of coining money in the Federal Government.
DIFFERENCE OF TIME.
Chicago, Ill.
What is the difference of time between Chicago and the principal cities of the world?
E. A. Jordan.
Answer.—The difference in time between Chicago and Washington is 42 minutes. Keeping this in mind, the reader can easily determine the difference of time between Chicago and other cities named in the following table, which shows the difference of time between Washington City and some of the chief cities of the globe, as calculated at the United States Naval Observatory, Washington:
Time Table.
At 12 o’clock noon, Saturday, at Washington it is—