[6] "Some years since, Mademoiselle Zélie, a singer of the Théâtre Lyrique at Paris, made a professional tour round the world, and gave a concert in the Society Islands. In exchange for an air from 'Norma,' and a few other songs, she was to receive a third part of the receipts. When counted, her share was found to consist of three pigs, twenty-three turkeys, forty-four chickens, five thousand cocoa-nuts, besides considerable quantities of bananas, lemons, and oranges. At the Halle (market) in Paris, the prima donna remarks, in her lively letter printed by M. Walowski, this amount of live stock and vegetables might have brought four thousand francs, which would have been good remuneration for five songs. In the Society Islands, however, pieces of money were very scarce; and as mademoiselle could not consume any considerable portion of the receipts herself, it became necessary in the mean time to feed the pigs and poultry with the fruit."--Jevons's Money and Mechanism of Exchange. [7] In 1658, it was ordered by the General Court of Massachusetts that no man should pay taxes "in lank cattle."--Felt's Massachusetts Currency. [8] This incident is related by Burton, in his "Explorations of the Lake Regions of Central Africa" (1858-'59), as one within his knowledge of actual occurrence. [9] In one of the mints there is exhibited as a curiosity a case in which this fact is demonstrated in the most striking manner. It contains some fifty or more very thin ribbons, or strips, of gold, half an inch wide by three inches in length, placed in a row, parallel to, but separated from each other by a slight interval. The first ribbon is composed of gold of the highest standard of purity; the second differs from the first to the extent of one per cent. of admixture with a baser metal; while the third contains two per cent., the fourth three per cent., and so on, until in the last ribbon, or strip, the amount of gold and alloy is equal. The color of the first ribbon is, in the highest sense of the term, golden or typical. The color of the second differs from the first by a shade, which shade in every successive ribbon changes and becomes more and more marked as the proportion of alloy entering into its composition increases: and so peculiar are these differences of color that it is possible for an individual unskilled in metallurgy, but having access to the standard, to make a comparatively accurate test of the purity of any article of gold in his possession by a simple comparison of color.