Ancient and extensive as the use of money has been in all its numerous forms and varied materials, it merely represented a property value which had been created by manual labor and preserved by the organic action of society. In a primitive state, herds of cattle and crops of grain were almost the only forms of wealth; the natural tendency and disposition of men to accumulate riches led them to fix a special value upon the metals, as a durable and always available kind of property. When their value in this way was generally recognized, the taxes and other revenues, created by kings and other potentates, was collected in part or wholly in that form of money. The government, to facilitate public business, stamped the various pieces of metal with their weight and quality, as they were received at the Treasury; and according to these stamps and marks, the same pieces were paid out of the Treasury, and circulated among the people at an authorized and fixed value. The next step was to reduce current prices of metal to a uniform size, shape, and quality, value and denomination, and make them, by special enactment, a legal tender for the payment of all taxes or public dues. Thus, a legalized currency of coined money was created, and the exchangeable value of the various metals used for that purpose fully established, to the great convenience of the world at large. ANCIENT COINING. The die for the obverse of the piece to be struck having been engraved, so as to properly present the religious or national symbol used for a device and whatever else was to be impressed upon the coin, was fixed immovably in an anvil or pedestal, face upwards. The lumps or balls of metal to be coined, having been made of a fixed and uniform weight and nearly of an oblate sphere in form, were grasped in a peculiarly constructed pair of tongs and laid upon the upturned die. A second operative then placed a punch squarely upon the ball of metal; heavy blows from a large hammer forced the punch down until the metal beneath it had been forced into every part of the die, and a good impress secured. In the meantime the punch would be imbedded in the lump of metal, and on being withdrawn the reverse of the coin would show a rough depression corresponding to the shape given the end of the punch, thereby making an uneven surface and disfiguring the piece; punch marks gradually developed into forms, and these forms combined with figures wrought into artistic design, until, by degrees, the punch itself became a die, making the reverse of each piece upon which it was used equal in every respect to the obverse of which it was the opposite. This perfection of the reverse was, however, secured at the expense of the effectiveness of the punch for its original purpose.