Tom $. VcGourin, State Coft*

Tom $. VcGourin, State Coft*

servationist of figjB Soil Conservation Service. *

With Federal funds available, assistance c^n he provided immediately for accelerating the installation of land treatment measures and preparing final designs and specifications for project structures. Some of the land treatment measures already are being applied.

In addition to the conservation land treatment necessary to protect and improve the land ' and water resources of the watershed, the, project includes nine floodwater retarding structures and about five miles of channel improvement.

Total cost of the project is estimated at $377,500, of which the Federal contribution will be about $230,100. Local interest^ Will provide about $147,400, including land, easements, an<i rights-of-way, and will operate and maintain the project when it is completed, Mr. Kipps said. The project will return $1.20 ifi direct benefits for every dollar of project cost, he added. Federal assistance will be provided by the Soil Conservation Service and the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

New Exhibit Shows

Evolution Of Money

Augustus the Strong could straighten a horseshoe with his bare hands, but he had a weak-: ness for gambling. In his reign as Frederick Augustus I, Elector of Saxony, (1694-1733), he struck a silver coin with a butterfly design for use as a counter at the card table.

One of the Elector’s “butterfly” talers is displayed in the new Hall of Montary History and Medallic Art at the Smithsonian Institution. The Hall shows the evolution of money from primitive barter to modern coinage systems, the National Geographic Society reports. Fines Paid in Catytle

In some cattle-raising ar^tfs of the yvorld, the cow or observed

as an early unit.of.kj-j change. The Greek’poet Homer1 mentions fines paid in cattle.

Bronze or copper slabs weighing about 60 pounds and shaped in the form of an ox hide were used as money in the eastern Mediterranean from 1600 to 1000 B.C. Called talents, the pieces actually represented the value of an ox.

King Gyges of ancient Lydia in Asia Minor issued the first true coins, and coinage spread through Greece and the Roman empire. Nero, along with his other dubious distinctions, was the first ruler to alloy and debase Roman coins.

After the fall of Rome the number of coins dwindled in western Europe. Charlemagne’s monetary reform in A.D. 781 transformed the Roman dedarius into the silver’s denier, or penny, which dominated the economy of the western world until the late 13th century.

In 1518, the Counts of Schlick began mining silver at Joachim, stal, in Bohemia. They struck coins that became known as Joachimstaler and later just