To all the evidence collected from Asia and Europe we can likewise add a fact of great importance from Africa. We saw that it was highly probable that the Carthaginians traded for gold to the West Coast of Africa, and beyond all reasonable doubt the natives of the Gold Coast have for ages been acquainted with that metal. Now it can be proved that these peoples, whilst employing no weights for any other mercantile transaction, used the seeds of certain plants for weighing their gold; thus Bosman writing two centuries ago says, “Having treated of gold at large, I am now obliged to say something concerning the gold weights, which are either pounds, marks, ounces or angels.... We use here another kind of weights which are a sort of beans, the least of which are red spotted with black and called Dambas; twenty-four of them amount to an angel, and each of them is reckoned two stiver weights; the white beans with black spots or those entirely black are heavier and accounted four stiver weights: these they usually call Tacoes, but there are some which weigh half or a whole gilder, but are not esteemed certain weights, but used at pleasure and often become instruments of fraud. Several have believed that the negroes only used wooden weights, but that is a mistake; all of them have cast weights either of copper or tin, which though divided or adjusted in a manner quite different to ours; yet upon reduction agree exactly with them[243]”. I am informed by Mr Quayle Jones, Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, that at the present day, a seed called the _Taku_, (with a black spot) is employed by the natives of the Gold Coast for weighing gold. He also tells me that small quantities of gold are measured by a quill in ordinary dealings in the market[244]. I learn from another private source that 6 Takus = 1 ackie (20 ackies = 1 ounce). From Bosnian’s equating the bean with the red spot to 2 stiver-weights, we can deduce its weight as 2 grs. troy; this result combined with the colour of the bean would make us a _à priori_ conclude that the Damba was the _Abrus precatorius_, so familiar to us already under its Hindu name of _ratti_. Here we have a primitive people with a weight system of their own based on the Damba and Taku, just as the Hindu is based on the _ratti_, and here too we have another proof that the first of all articles to be weighed is gold. From Bosman we also learn that gold in small quantities was not always weighed, for he says of the inferior gold which was mixed with silver or copper, that it is cast into fetiches (small grotesque figures). “These fetiches are cut into small bits by the negroes of one, two, or three farthings. The negroes know the exact value of these bits so well at sight, that they never are mistaken, and accordingly they sell them to each other without weighing as we do coined money[245].” This recalls the practice as regards silver among the Tibetans at the present day.