41. Different matters are able to serve and have served for
current money.
Many nations have adopted in their language and in their
trade, as a common measure of value, different matters more or
less precious. There are at this day, some barbarous nations, who
make use of a species of little shells, called cowries. I
remember to have seen when at college, some apricot stones
exchanged and passed as a species of money among the scholars,
who made use of them at certain games. I have already spoken of a
valuation by heads of cattle; some of these are to be found in
the vestiges of the laws of the ancient German nations, who
over-ran the Roman empire. The first Romans, or at least the
Latins, their ancestors, made use of them also. It is pretended
that the first money they struck in brass, represented the value
of a sheep, and bore the image of that animal, and that the name
of Pecunia has obtained from pecus. This conjecture carries with
it a great probability.
