NOTES ON COINS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1648, 9 December 1916, Page 4

NOTES ON COINS.

An interesting - article in the Scientific American calls attention to several important points in connection with coins and coinage. The first coins are stated to have been those of Croesus, King of Lydia, who issued gold and silver coins in the years SGO to 540- B.C. This, however, is to ignore the story of the Greek money struck in the island of Aegina by Phidon, King ot Argos, in the seventh century, B.C. Previous to this spikes ot silver Greek oholoi —were used as the medium of exchange. Hence the smallest coin was called an obolus, and is famous ns the piece ot money put into the month of the dead to pay the ferry-man Charon. About six ot these silver spikes made a handful, and hence the next coin was called a drachma, which in Greek means a handful. The word is retained in our drachma, or dram, as a. weight.

The precious metals were originally weighed out in payment, as when Abraham weighed out the silver for the field he had bought. The early coins were primarily weights of metal. “To tins day, there is one surviving relic (in name only) ot this first system of payment hy weight. It is the word pound.” The pound or sovereign, was originally the equivalent of a pound weight of silver. Xow, some sixty shillings can he coined out of a pound of silver. It is not so generally known that the shilling and penny were both originally weights. Thus in the time of Henry 11. it was enacted that “If corn he al 1-d a quarter, the farthing loaf .shall weigh Oil). 10 shillings.” As a weight the shilling was one-twentieth of a pound. And like the Donum as, our penny was also a pound weight of mclal. A trace of this remains in the expressions “lenpenny and six-penny nails.” Benny is iiere explained as meaning pound. In the first case 1,000 of the nails weighed ten pounds, and in the second six pounds. Pennyweight, again, is still one of onr weights.