212 AKT IN SHELL OF THE ANCIENT AMERICANS. 



Adair, speakiug of the Choctaws, says that "both sexes phick all the 

 hail" ofif their bodies with a kind of tweezers, made formerly of clam 

 shells."' Strachey states that shells were used by the Virgiuiau ludians 

 for cutting hair. Beverly says of the Virginia Indians that they "pull 

 their Beards np by the Eoots with Muscle-shells, and both Men and 

 Women do the same by the other Parts of their Body for Cleanliness 

 sake.'" Heckewelder states that "Before the Europeans came into the 

 country their apparatus for performing this work consisted of a pair of 

 mussel-shells, sharpened on a gritty stone, which answered the purpose 

 very well, being somewhat like pincers.'" 



Fig. 5, Plate XXVII, reproduced from a plate in the Necropolis of 

 Ancon^ represents two small Mytilus shells pierced at the beak and 

 bound together with a cord. They were found in one of the ancient 

 graves of Peru, and may have been used for a similar purpose. 



'Adair: History of tho American ludians, p. 6. 



2 Beverly: History of Virginia, p. 140. 



3 Heckewelder's Indian Nations, i). 205. 



<Eeis8 and StUbel: Necropolis of Ancon, Plate 83, fig. 17^. 



