Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/56

 of commodity, although originally it meant simply an iron bar of fixed dimensions, which formed the chief article of exchange between the natives and the earliest European traders. In other parts of the same region axes serve as currency; these are too small to be really employed as an implement, but are doubtless the survival of a period not long past when real axes served as money. Thus we get a complete analogy to the hoe money of the Chinese and the fish-hook currency of Ceylon and the Maldive Islands. In Calabar they formerly employed bunches of quadrangular copper-wire as currency. Each wire was about 12 inches long, and they were of course meant to be made into necklets and armlets.

Axe Money (West Africa).

In other parts of the West Coast, as in the Bonny River territory, iron rings very closely resembling in shape the bronze