As to the value of the tusk-sliells among the California Indians, the metliod 

 of reckoning the same is by measuring the shells on the finger-joints, the 

 longest being worth the most. 



We have been informed that the Indians who formerly resided in tlie neigh- 

 borhood of the old Russian settlement of Bodega, used pieces of a (bivalve) 

 clam-shell {Saxidomus m-atus*) for money, but we have been unable to 

 obtain a specimen, or to verify the statement. Recently, our friend Mr. 

 Harford, of the Coast Survey, has discovered in some Indian graves, on 

 one of the islands off the southerly coast of this State, beads, or money, 

 of a different character from any heretofore observed. These were made 

 by grinding off the spire and lower portion of a species of univalve shell (0/iw//« 

 ii/3/ica?rt,Sby., Plate VI, Fig. 3), so as to form small, flat, button-shaped disks 

 with a single central hole. 'J'hese much resemble in form some of the wampum 

 of the New England tribes. Another variety was found in the same places by 

 the gentleman named, which was made of a species of key-hole limpet-shell 

 {Lucapi7mcrenulata,Qby.,TMeYl, Fig. 6), of much larger size than that first 

 mentioned. So far, however, as we have investigated, these last described forms 

 of shell-money are not in use among the California Indians of the present day. 

 Plate VI. Figures 6^ and 6^ represent beads or money made from Lucapina. 



The use of shells for money is not peculiar to the natives of North America. 

 The well-known and exceedingly common money coicr// (Cv/^jrcfl moneto, Plate 

 VI, Figs. 5, and 5*) or "prop-shell," an inhabitant of the Indo- Pacific waters, "is 

 used as money in Hindostan and many parts of Africa. .. .Many tons are 



imported to Great Britain and. . . .exported for barter with the native 



tribes of western Africa." f 



Reeve mentions in the second volume of the Conckologia Systematica, that 

 " a gentleman residing at Cuttack, is said to have paid for the erection of his 

 bungalow entirely in these cowries (C. moneta). The building cost him about 

 4,000 7'upees sicca (£400 sterling), and, as sixty-four of these shells are equiva- 

 lent in value to one pice, and sixty-four pice to a rupee sicca, he paid for it with 

 over 16,000,000 of these shells." 



Though the number above mentioned is very large, the prop-shell is an ex- 

 ceedingly abundant form. We have received in a single box from the East 

 Indies not less than 10,000 specimens at one time. " In the year 1848, sixty 

 tons were imported into Liverpool, and in 1849, nearly three" hundred tons were 

 brought to the same port." 



The following extract from a paper by Prof. E. S. Holden, on Early Hindoo 

 Mathematics,^ justifies the inference that the use of the Cyprxu monctu for 

 money has a very considerable antiquity, and quite likely extends back to a period 

 many centuries earlier than the date of the treatise.§ "The treatise continues rap- 



*S. aratuB-j-S. gracilis, Gld. 



tBaird's Dictionary of Natural History, p. 193. 



J Popular Science Monthly, July, 1873, p. 337. 



§ " This treatise, the Lilivati of Bhascara Acliarya, is supposed to have been a compilation, 

 and there are reasons for believing a portion of it to have been writteu about a. d. G28. How- 

 ever this may be, it is of the greatest interest, and its date is sufficiently remote to give to 

 Hindoo mathematics a respectable antiquity. " 



