The ear of corn (wheat) on the coins of Metapontum[399], an old Achaean colony in Magna Graecia, is explained by modern writers as a symbol of Demeter: but the story told by Strabo of how the early settlers dedicated a golden ear at Delphi because they had amassed such great wealth from agriculture, indicates a far simpler solution, that the chief product and chief article of barter of Metapontum was naturally placed on her coins. As the tunny adorns the coins of Cyzicus, so we find the cuttle-fish on the coins of Croton and Eretria. As this creature was devoured with great gusto by the ancients, as it is at the present day at Naples and in Palestine, there is no necessity to regard it as a symbol of Poseidon, or of treating it in any way different from the tunny. [Illustration: FIG. 43. Coin of Croton with cuttle fish.] [Illustration: FIG. 44. ‘Tortoise’ of Aegina.] I now come to two most important types, the Tortoise of Aegina, and the Shield of Boeotia. I have already mentioned the symbolic interpretation given by E. Curtius to the former. That various natural productions, such as gourds, cocoa-nuts, joints of bamboo, served and still serve as vessels and measures of capacity in various countries we have seen already, and we likewise found that in the ancient Chinese monetary system of shells the shell of the tortoise stood at the top as the unit of highest value, and that down to a comparatively late epoch it was still highly prized in Cochin China for making bowls of great beauty. In both Greek and Latin there is abundant evidence to show that the functions which in a later time were performed by pottery were discharged by natural shells at an earlier period. Thus, if we do not find any actual vessel called a _chelône_ (tortoise) in use amongst the Greeks, we at least find one called a Sea-urchin (Echinus, ἐχῖνος): for not only was the shell of this creature used as a vessel for containing medicines and the like, but vessels of artificial construction of the same shape and name were actually employed; thus the casket in which were deposited and sealed up the documents produced at the preliminary hearing of an Athenian lawsuit was called an _Echinus_. There was likewise a small vessel called _conché_ (κόγχη), after the shell-fish of that name, the Latin _concha_, whilst a cognate name, _conchylion_, was applied to the case placed over the seals of wills.