PEARLS AND PEARL SHELLS. 443 



Pavilion. This rare and elegant material, nearly all found during the latter part of 

 the eighteenth century, is a limestone filled with fossilized shells, in which the colors 

 have become so splendidly intensified that it is frequently difficult to decide at a 

 glance whether a cut specimen is a fire opal from Mexico or lumachelle marble. 



Pearls were used in large quantities by the prehistoric i ribes of America, and have 

 been found in great numbers in the tumuli of the Scioto and Miami valleys in Ohio. 

 Prof. F. W. Putnam, of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass., and Mr. Warren K. 

 Moorebead, of Xenia, Ohio, have made extensive explorations in these mounds, some of 

 the results of which were shown at the World's Pair. The former had investigated 

 particularly the Turner group of mounds in the Little Miami Valley, the latter the 

 Hopewell group in Eoss County, near Chillicothe, on the North Fork of Paint Creek. 



In the Anthropological building was shown the great "find" of pearls made 

 by Mr. Moorehead in the Effigy mound of the Hopewell group. Here more than a 

 gallon of pearls was obtained with two skeletons. They ranged from the size of a 

 small millet-seed to a diameter of two-thirds of an inch, or even more. In shape they 

 were usually irregular, though many were round or nearly so; but the absence of the 

 elongated and hinge pearls is remarkable. All have been drilled, with holes varying 

 from 1 to fully 3 mm. in diameter, but generally the larger size, made with a heated 

 copper wire, in the manner described by early travelers as common among the Indians. 

 This drilling was undoubtedly for the purpose of attaching them to clothing or belts, 

 as shown by the fact that four or five hundred had been originally sewed upon a rough 

 cloth shirt extending from the waist to the knees of a skeleton. Copper plates on the 

 hips had preserved traces of the cloth, and several dozen beads were found with cloth 

 fiber still extending through the perforation. Pearls were usually placed at the wrists, 

 on the ankles, around the neck, or in the mouth. In the Porter mounds at Frankfort, 

 Eoss County, several hundred were on copper plates. Nearly all, however, are found 

 loose, although some are imbedded in a hard, rock-like mass of clay, cemented either 

 by a calcareous solution from the weathering of tbe pearls or by an iron oxide pro- 

 duced by the decomposition of the meteoric iron ornaments that were found in such 

 quantities in the Hopewell group of mounds. These, like all the pearls found in 

 mounds in the Ohio and adjacent valleys, were undoubtedly from the Unios, which 

 were evidently very plentiful at the time these were collected. Very few of the pearls 

 have retained any of the original orient, although it is possible that by peeling them 

 some good unaltered pearl surfaces could be obtained; but it is more likely that 

 either heat or burial in the ground, where they have undoubtedly lain for centuries, 

 has destroyed them by infiltration of surface waters through the earth in which they 

 were imbedded. 



In the explorations in which Mr. Moorehead has been engaged, he has found over 

 forty bear's teeth in which pearls had been set, lying near skeletons. The settings 

 were in the side or near the base (root) of the tooth. Skeletons accompanied by a 

 large number of pearls always have other relics associated with them, such as native 

 copper articles, mica, obsidian, galena-, hematite, ocean shells, bad-land fossils, and other 

 foreign objects. This fact would indicate clearly that the remains thus distinguished 

 must have been those of prominent persons. 



From the altars or " hearths" in mounds have been taken thousands of spherical 

 pearls. For instance, at the Turner group in the Little Miami Valley, Prof. Putnam, 

 exploring for the Peabody Museum, secured half a bushel, nearly every one blackened 



