300] Other cases of the use of
shells will be given below. A dress pattern of cotton cloth,
seven ells, called a "tobe," is a unit of monetary reference
through the Sudan.[301] Another money in the same region is the
iron spade, with which tribute is paid to the petty rulers of
eastern Equatoria. The spades are made of native iron and are
used upon occasion to cut down the grass.[302] Expeditions into
the Niam Niam territories always have a smith with them whose
duty it is to make rings of copper and iron wire, with a square
section, for minor purchases.[303] The currency of beads has
greatly lessened wherever more useful objects of European
manufacture have become known.[304] Forms of the lance head are
used to buy a wife, who costs twenty or thirty of them.[305]
Further south von Goetzen found brass wire, in pieces fifteen to
thirty-five centimeters long, in use as money, not being an
article of use, but a real money used to store value, to buy what
is wanted, and to pay taxes for protection against one's forest
neighbors.[306] Formerly, when beads were still used as money,
each district had its own preferred size, shape, and color.
Travelers found that the fashion in a district had changed since
the information was obtained, relying on which they had provided
themselves. This is, however, evidently a part of the operation
of differentiating the predominant ware.[307]

+147. Token money.+ Token money demands treatment by itself, as a
special development of the money-producing movement. If different groups
adopt different kinds of amulet ornaments as money, such intragroup
money may be token money. If one such group conquers another, the
conquerors may throw the money of the conquered out of use (whites and
Indians as to wampum). In Burma Chinese gambling counters are used as
money.[308] Guttapercha tokens issued by street-car companies in South
America are said to be used in the same way. Postage stamps, milk
tickets, etc., have been so used by us. In Massachusetts, in the
eighteenth century, pieces of paper were circulated which had no
redemption whatever. They bore the names of coins of silver which did
not exist, but which had a definition in a certain amount of silver of a
certain fineness. At Carthage pieces of leather which inclosed an
unknown object, probably one of the holy moneys, were circulated.[309]
The same is reported of bits of leather c