We would first remind our readers of the derivations of two words applied to a peculiar form of wealth—the substantive _fee_ and the adjective _pecuniary_, which, though so widely different in form, recall to us the same idea through the vehicle of different languages. They are both taken from words—the one Saxon, the other Latin—signifying “cattle,” and thus take us back to the times when flocks and herds were the chief property of our ancestors, the evidence as well as the source of their wealth. It is curious how, from this first signification, the words came to be considered applicable to wealth of any kind, and have now become almost limited in meaning to property in the form of money. To the same days of primitive simplicity we may also undoubtedly attribute the word _rivals_, when the pastoral dwellers by the same stream (Latin _rivus_) would not unfrequently be brought into unfriendly competition with each other. Some words and expressions are derived from the time when but few persons could boast of what we should consider the most elementary education. The word _signature_, for example, had a more literal application in the days when the art of writing was known but to a few monks and scholars, and when kings and barons, no less than their humbler followers, affixed their cross or _sign_ to any document requiring their assent. Again, when we speak of abstruse _calculations_, we make unthinking reference to the primitive method of counting by means of pebbles (_calculi_), resorted to by the Romans.