Leather was used as currency by the Lacedaemonians, and Plato states that leather money was em- ployed by the Carthaginians in his day, and that it was probably the earliest currency of that people. These citations, however, probably refer to the skins of various animals, and the stamped leather which it is claimed was used by the Romans before the introduction of a copper coinage by Numa Pompilius was perhaps an entire skin or pelt rather than a distinctive coin.

There is no doubt, however, that in more modern times nations have adopted a leather coinage which frequently served the function of necessity money, and which was made redeemable for a metallic cur- rency. In the year 1241 the Emperor Frederick II issued leather coins when he was besieging Paenza for seven months, and these were later exchanged for gold Augustali which had the value of one and a quarter gold Gulden. The coins issued by the Emperor contained his portrait im- pressed in silver on the leather.

More than a century earlier, i.e., in 1124, Dominicus Michieli, Doge of Venice, issued obsidional coins of leather cut from horse hides for the beleaguered city of Tyrus. This coin received the name of Michieletta from its originator. In 1360, John II, King of France, authorized the making of small leather coins with small golden threads sewn or stamped upon them; this he was compelled to do as his treasury was depleted on account of a ransom of three million livres paid to the English nation. Stamped leather coins were issued by Ley- den in 1574, when the city was besieged by the Spaniards under Valdez; they bore as a device three shields and a stag, with the letters S. M. and H. S.

The Russians at an early period used skins of animals for currency and later they employed irregular discs and strips of leather rudely stamped. The word "rouble" is derived from the verb to cut, and some varieties of Russian copper money are called Puli, from poul, leather; these words are probably derived from the primitive leather currency in use in that country. See an exhaustive paper on this subject contributed by William Charlton to the British Numismatic Journal (iii. 311).

In 1910 a roll of circular leather tokens was discovered in the archives of the mar- ket at Aschbach on the Danube in upper Austria. These tokens bore the crest of Philip Eder of the guild of masons and stone-cutters at Eferding (near Aschbach) and the date 1804. Leather strips were also found from which these tokens were cut. Mr. Franz Hirmann, the founder of the museum at Aschbach, has discovered among the records that at the time of the French occupation the masons and stone- workers were employed by the French in the construction of intrenchments, and were paid by the master of the guild with these leather coins which represented the value of one Groschen. See also Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Britain. 1840. (i. 131, 346).