The Use of Alcyonarians as Money

Abstract

THERE has just been presented to the Royal Scottish Museum by Dr. E. MacKenzie, of Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, a large Cœnterate colony found on the shores of the island after a storm. Dr. MacKenzie supplies the information that such colonies are held in great esteem by the natives, who use them as charms, wearing constantly a few twigs contained in a small bag or basket slung to the wrist, in the assurance that so good fortune will follow. But few other than chiefs are fortunate enough to possess this valuable jetsam. The twigs are also used as a medium of barter, a fragment of a colony, say, a branch seven or eight inches long, with its associated branchlets, having the exchange value of half a dozen pigs—the staple wealth of the island—or a wife.