Caput Aspergellis Pubblico Deposited
were used as money in the primitive stage of man's existence. The passage in Job ii. 4 has been construed by some writers to indicate that skins were regarded as representatives of value. There was at one time a connection between skins and money, for in the language of the Esthonians the word for money is raha, and in the kindred language of the Lap- landers the same word means fur or a skin.
Pelts were used in Scandinavia and when tied in packages of forty constituted a money of account called Zimmer. In west- ern Russia the fur and skin of the black marmot was used as late as the end of the fourteenth century. This was called Kuna, from the name of the animal. Blanchet (ii. 191) states that the heads of squirrels, Ca- put aspergellis, were employed in Russia in the eleventh century as a medium of ex- change, and were later adopted in Poland.
The Hudson's Bay Company made fur skins the common medium of exchange and measure of value in its dealings with the Indians. Conf. also Breton (Nos. 926- 929) ; Nohack (p. 895), and Leather Money (supra).
- Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)