WEAR OF COIN.

CI-IAP. XXIII.

that is not the full legal weight. This was somuch the case that when gold rose so that a lightguinea as bullion was worth twenty-five or sixshillings, the bank refused to take it as money attwenty-one shillings.

It may be farther observed with regard to thisexperiment of 1826, that those pieces which hadbeen coined but one year suffered a much greaterproportion of loss than those which had beencoined five years or nine years. Those of oneyear old suffered a loss of one shilling and three-pence, which in the ten years would be twelveshillings and sixpence, whereas those of nineyears appear to have lost only at the rate of fourshillings and sixpence. It deserves also to beremarked that the dirt accumulated on the piecesis a better criterion of the length of time they hadbeen in circulation than the loss on weight. Ifthe period of circulation be measured by the por-tion of dirt adhering to the pieces, the conclusionfrom this experiment would be that the piecescoined in 1821 had circulated more, if not longer,than those coined in 1817. The first were foundto have three grains of dirt to each hundred pieces,and the second, though double their age, onlytwo grains of dirt to each hundred pieces. Thepieces which had been coined but one year werefound to have contracted dirt at the rate of morethan one grain and a half in that time. If thenthose of nine years old had equally circulated, they