With regard to the scope of the present work, it is confined entirely to the history of metallic currency and standard. There is no reference to the paper-money experience of any country, not even America or Austria. Such a subject must form matter for a separate treatment. The account of Austrian money is, therefore, to be found in Appendix v., under Germany, and on the effects of the latest Austrian reform (as also of the latest development in India and the United States) no opinion whatever is expressed. I content myself with the simple statement of fact and event. In appending a list of the authorities used, it is difficult to overcome the feeling of humiliation which has come to me from the contrast of the ephemeral, slight, and unworthy treatment of monetary history to-day, with the grand, solid, scholarly works which the eighteenth century produced. With the exception of Soetbeer's magnificent labours, without which the present work would have been simply impossible as far as the statements of production and relativity of the precious metals are concerned, and of the similar historic work of M. Ottomar Haupt, the literature of this subject to-day is light and polemic and transitory to a nauseating degree. GENERAL _Authorities._ J.D. Köhler Grundliche Nachricht von dem Münzwesen insgemein. Helmstadt, 1739 and 1741. Third edition (Leipzig, 1781), enlarged and attributed to Von Praun. Budelius De monetis et re numaria (with twenty-four other treatises). Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1591. Melchior Goldast Catholicon rei monetariæ sive leges monarchichæ generales de rebus numariis, etc. Frankfort, 1620. Almanach des Monnaies. Paris, 1784. Münze und Münzwissenschaft (Oec. Techn. Encyc. xcvii.). Nicole Oresme Traité de la première invention des monnaies, and-- Copernicus Traité de la monnaie, both re-edited by Wolowski. Paris, 1864. Jean Bodin Descours sur le rehaussement et diminution tant d'or que d'argent et le moyen d'y remedier [en reponse] aux paradoxes du sieur de Malestroict (appended to Bodin's Six Livres de la Republique. Lyons, 1593). H.C. Dittmer Geschichte der ersten Gold-Ausmünzungen zu Lübeck im 14 Jahrhundert (Zeitschrift der Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte), Heft. i. 885.