Chinese Currency.

This article presents information on the book "On Chinese Currency, Coin and Paper Money," by W. Vissering. The book rests upon the Chinese authority, the history of Ma-twan-lin, but Vissering has subjected the original to more thorough examination, and with far greater advantages. His book is a study in Chinese and in the history of money. Vissering proposed to give a summary of the most important facts under the latter head which his book contains. Several concurrent traditions narrate that money was first coined by the common people in times of calamity. This seems to mean that all lived ordinarily by agriculture and exchanged by barter, but when the crops failed they took to mining copper, which they cast into coins for convenience in exchanging it for goods.