Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/29

at Fort Yukon, as the workmen were also charged for clothing, etc., in this way^[1]." Similarly in the extreme north of Asia we find some Ostiak tribes using the skin of the Siberian squirrel as their unit of account.

The name of a small coin equal to a quarter kopeck indicates that originally the Slavs had a like form of currency. It is called polooshka. Ooshka (properly little ears) means a hare-skin, and polooshka means half a hare-skin^[2].

Fig. 1. Cowrie Shell (Cypraea moneta).

When we turn to the torrid zone, where clothes are only an incumbrance and Nature lavishly supplies plenteous stores of fruits and vegetables, the chief objects of desire will not be food and clothing but ornaments, implements and weapons. Hence we find amongst the inhabitants of such regions in especial strength that passion for personal adornment, which is one of the most powerful and primitive instincts of the human race. Shells have from very remote times formed one of the most simple forms of adornment in all parts of the world. Shells which once perhaps formed the necklace of some beauty of the neolithic age are found with the remains of the cave men of Auvergne. Strings of cowries under their various names of changos, zimbis, bonges or porcelain shells are both durable, universally esteemed, and portable, and therefore suited to form a medium of exchange, and as such they are employed in the East Indies, Siam, and on the East and West Coasts of Africa; on the tropical coasts they serve the purposes of small change, being collected on the shores of the Maldive and Laccadive islands and exported for that object. The relative value varies slightly according to their abundance or scarcity. In India the usual ratio was about 5000 to the rupee. Marco Polo found the cowry

1. Whymper's Alaska, p. 225.
2. Morier, Murray's Magazine, August, 1889, p. 181.