Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF METAL MONEY The desire to wear ornaments, as a trait of the primitive tribes as well as of civilized races, has already been noted. Wild flowers were doubtless worn for this purpose from remotest times. The earliest traditions speak of the use of garlands of flowers to deck the altars of the gods or to enhance the charms of beautiful women. It is not likely, however, that flowers were ever objects even of barter. A desire for rare plants is developed with the complex civilization of more modern times. As an instance, may be mentioned the period when a craze for tulips took possession of the entire population of Holland and fabulous sums were paid for rare specimens of that flower. In early days articles of rarity, in order to be of value for barter, were less perishable than flowers that faded in a day. Rare shells and other natural objects found on the surface of the earth had their day, and then came ornaments made from substances that were dug from beneath the surface. Silver and gold, were discovered and their beauty admired. From that day until the present time these two metals have been eagerly sought by almost all mankind. Their relative values have varied, but from the earliest day of history and tradition there has never been a time when gold and silver have not been thought of as wealth. These metals were shaped, first roughly and then with more care, into such objects of ornament as the fancy of each person dictated. Then rings of a standard size were used for purposes of exchange. When this occurred, gold and silver ceased to be merely articles of barter and became money in the true meaning of the word. In the records of the early Hebrew Scriptures the sons of Jacob took money into Egypt to buy food. This money, it is known, co...