meant for copper, iron, lead, and merchandise of value. We have learned from our studies in the metal trade of primitive peoples that copper and iron are not weighed but are sold by measurement, being wrought into bars or plates of a well defined size. It is only when communities are well advanced in culture that they begin to employ the scales for the buying and selling of the common metals. We argued above that the double shekel system arose from a desire amongst a nation of traders like the Phoenicians for a heavier standard, more serviceable for such goods as were less valuable than gold. It was probably the same desire which found its complete realization in the royal system. Whilst gold and silver had only the mina as their highest unit, there was a new system developed scientifically from the ancient shekel or ox-unit. The sixty-fold of this unit was taken to form a mina considerably heavier than the old gold mina, and now a new higher unit, the sixty-fold of the mina, was introduced. This we know under its Greek name of _talent_, but it was called _kikkar_ in the Semitic languages. Now are we to suppose that this _kikkar_ or talent was purely and simply nothing more than a higher unit formed by taking a convenient multiple of the lower unit, just as in the French metric system the kilogram is 1000 times the gramme; or was it rather some ancient natural unit, originally formed empirically, and at a later epoch, when science had advanced, fitted into the system of commercial weight by being made exactly the sixty-fold of the _mina_? Comparison with other systems in various lands will incline us to the latter alternative. If we enquire for a moment in what manner the highest unit of weight for merchandise is fixed among barbarous and semi-civilized nationalities, we shall find that the _load_, that is, the amount that a man of average size and strength can carry, is the universal unit. Readers of the various recent books of African travel frequently meet in their dreary and monotonous pages allusions to so many _loads_ for which porters have to be supplied. The amount of the _load_ seems to vary in different parts. Thus amongst the Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa, a pure negro race, according to that admirable observer Mr Felkin, the _load_ is about 50 lbs. in weight, whilst according to Major Barttelot, the _load_ carried by the Zanzibaris on the Emin Pacha Relief expedition was 65 lbs. (besides the man’s own rations for several days). We have already had occasion to refer to the _picul_ of Eastern Asia, which we found was simply the Malay word for a _load_; and we also found that the load varied in different places. Finally, we found that the Chinese had introduced the _picul_ into their system of commercial weight, fixing it at 100 _chings_ (catties), but at the same time excluded it from their silver and gold system, where the _tael_ (ounce) has remained always the highest unit. Yet in Cambodia we find that the