Many kinds of food and of clothing are very generally desired goods.

But few of these classes of goods have in a high measure certain other important qualities, now to be named.
2.

Transportability; that is, the money material must be easy to carry, it must have a large value in small bulk and weight.

To carry a bag of wheat on one's back a few miles requires as great an effort ordinarily as does the raising of the wheat, and the cost of carriage for fifty miles even by wagon will often equal the whole value of the wheat.

Cattle, while not comparatively very valuable in proportion to weight, and not possessing the other qualities of money in the highest degree, have the advantage that they can be made to carry themselves long distances, and therefore they have been much used as money in simpler economic conditions.
3.