The antiquity of many of these Slang names is remarkable. "Winn" was the vulgar term for a penny in the days of Queen Elizabeth; and "tester," a sixpence (formerly a shilling), was the correct name in the days of Henry VIII. The reader, too, will have remarked the frequency of animals' names as Slang terms for money. Little, as a modern writer has remarked, do the persons using these phrases know of their remote and somewhat classical origin, which may, indeed, be traced to a period anterior to that when monarchs monopolized the surface of coined money with their own images and superscriptions. They are identical with the very name of money among the early Romans, which was _pecunia_, from _pecus_, a flock. The collections of coin-dealers amply show that the figure of a "hog" was anciently placed on a small silver coin; and that that of a "bull" decorated larger ones of the same metal. These coins were frequently deeply crossed on the reverse; this was for the convenience of easily breaking them into two or more pieces, should the bargain for which they were employed require it, and the parties making it had no smaller change handy to complete the transaction. Thus we find that the "half bull" of the itinerant street-seller, or "traveller," so far from being a phrase of modern invention, as is generally supposed, is in point of fact referable to an era extremely remote. This remark will safely apply to most descriptions of money; and it must not be forgotten that farthing is but a corruption of fourthing, or, literally, fourth part of a penny. The representative coin of the realm was often in olden times made to break up,--but this by the way. It is a reminder, however, that the word "smash," as used by the classes that speak Slang from motives other than those of affectation, has nothing whatever to do with base coin, as is generally supposed. It simply means to give change. Thus:--"Can you smash a thick 'un for me?" means simply, "Can you give me change for a sovereign?" We learn from Erizzo, in his _Discorso_, a further illustration of the proverb "that there is nothing new under the sun;" for he says that the Roman boys at the time of Hadrian tossed up their coppers and cried, "Head or ship;" of which tradition our "heads or tails," and "man or woman," or "a tanner I heads 'em," is certainly a less refined version. We thence gather, however, that the prow of a vessel would appear to have been the more ordinary device of the reverse of the brass coin of that ancient period. There are many other Cant words directly from a classic source, as will be seen in the dictionary.