definite use, owing to which they were so highly prized. The attention paid to their tone would lead us to conjecture that they were employed as a kind of gong, and further on we shall find certain peoples of Further Asia paying a large price in buffaloes for gongs. Before we quit finally the northern latitudes, it is worth our while to observe the method of currency employed by the Icelanders. As metals and other products of the land were scarce in their bleak home, the stockfish (dried cod) formed naturally their chief commodity, and hence it appears on the arms of Denmark as the emblem of Iceland. There is still extant a proclamation for the regulation of English trade with Iceland issued sometime between 1413 and 1426. As, _mutatis mutandis_, it affords admirable insight into the methods by which trade was carried on between men of different nations in the emporia of the Mediterranean, and in fact everywhere else, it is worth giving it _in extenso_[25]. “I, _N. M._ do proclaim here to-day a general market between the English and the Icelandic men, who have come here with peace and fair dealing, and between the Icelandic men and the men of the islands who wish to carry on their trade here. “First I proclaim this market on conditions of peace and lawful security between one and the other, so that each can entirely dispose of his own if he buy or if he sell. Price list in stockfish: of fish 2, 2½, or 1¾ lbs., 80 lbs. must be the equivalent of a hundred (of cloth, i.e. 129 _alens_ of _vadme_, a cloth formerly used as a medium of exchange), provided the persons concerned cannot agree as to the price.