one to nineteen and one-half.  The supply of silver beyond a legitimate demand for financial purposes, the decrease of the export of silver to the East, and the demonetization of silver by the principal countries of Europe, have induced a tendency in the ratio of the two metals to again advance.  Gold was extremely abundant in ancient times.  It was plenteously furnished by the rivers of Asia.  The sands of Pactolus, the golden fleece conquered by the Argonauts, the gold of Ophir, the fable of King Midas, all tend to show the eastern origin of gold.  It was abundant in Cabul and Little Thibet.  It abounded in the empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining operations, now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects of gold contained in their tombs.  Dennis ("History of the Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,” vol.  II, p. 50) states that “gold ornaments, whose beauty and richness are amazing, abound in the tombs of the Etruscans, who were undoubtedly one of the most remarkable nations of antiquity, and the great civilizers of Italy.  In a single tomb in Cerveti, fragments of breastplates, earrings, and brooches, sufficient to fill more than one basket, were found crushed beneath a mass of fallen masonry.  A gold chain, with a number of pendant scaraboei, was found in a tomb in Vulci, transcending anything before seen by him.  Bieda, Chiusi, Canosa, Casuccini, Perugia, and Veii belong in the same category.”  Schlieman ("Ilios” p. 253, et. seq.) states that they had an abundance of gold, bordering, as they did, on Phrygia, and nearly touching the valley of the Pactolus, so famous for its auriferous sands.  It was very pure and therefore easily worked.  In a tomb a single vase was found containing eighty-seven hundred small objects of gold.  Ornaments of gold are very abundant in the tombs of Mycenae.  In remote antiquity the bulk of gold was brought by the Phenicians from Arabia, which had twenty-two gold mines.  It was the ancient El Dorado, and proverbial for its wealth of gold in all antiquity, down to the Middle Ages.  “Arabia sends us gold,” said Thomas A. Becket.  Sacred ornaments of gold abound in churches, temples, pagodas, and tombs, throughout the Eastern hemisphere.  The Homeric poems call Mycenae a city rich in gold.  Gold abounded in the Levant, and it was obtained in considerable quantity in the island of Siphnos, and also from Pangaeus.  It was found in abundance in Turdeltania in Spain; it was brought down by the rivers Tagus and Duoro; and it was plenty in Dacia, Transylvania, and the Asturias.  Caligula caused his guests to be helped with gold (which they carried away), instead of bread and meat.  The dresses of Nero were stiff with embroidery and gold; he fished with hooks of gold, and his attendants wore necklaces, and bracelets of gold.  The Egyptians obtained large quantities of gold from the upper Nile, and from Ethiopia.  Among them it was estimated by weight, usually in the form of bulls or oxen.  In the centre of the continent, upon which so much