science as merely ancillary to our enquiries.
We have now seen the importance of the ox over the whole area of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, in which those ancient peoples dwelt of whom history has preserved for us some knowledge. We have likewise found that over the same area gold was known and played an important part from a very remote antiquity. This proof has depended of course almost entirely on the literary remains and archaeological evidence. Political Economists, when discoursing on the oft-vexed question of monetary standards, lay down as one of the reasons why gold has been found so convenient, that it is universally found. Whether that fact is of much importance in modern times, when the facilities of communication are so great, may perhaps be doubted (especially when we see some of the largest stocks of gold existing in countries like England and France, where there has been no production of gold for many years), but most certainly in early times it was of great importance, as we shall see, that the supplies of gold were not all concentrated in one or two places, but that at many points in all the different countries which came within the area of the ancient world, nature had had her treasure-houses.