Ol 
The fifth and most inferior grade is AZadz/a, cut from 
the smailer sizes of Jaffna dead shells. The wholesale 
price varies from Rs. 5 to Rs. ro per 100 sections. 
(¢) DETAILS OF BANGLE MANUFACTURE. 
Being an industry widely scattered over a large area, 
the two Bengals and Assam, it is to be expected that 
considerable variations in the conduct of manufacture 
should prevail. In large centres such as Dacca and 
Calcutta a great part of the work is carried on by 
capitalists employing workpeople on piecework ; else- 
where it is largely a home or family industry carried on 
by the head of a household with the aid of his sons and 
relatives. 
In Dacca the industry falls into two chief divisions, 
one engaged upon the preparation of working sections 
of the shell which may either be wrought into the 
finished product by other craftsmen in the town or else 
exported to other places where the trade is limited to the 
ornamentation of working sections sawn from the shells 
elsewhere. 
The preparation of working sections is carried out 
usually in shady sheds in the backyards of the employers. 
In a typical one six sawyers were employed. The shell 
first passes through a preparatory treatment for the 
purpose of extracting the columellaand thereby reducing 
the amount of labour necessary in sawing the shell into 
sections. To admit of this a slice of the lip is first sawn 
off ; it is then comparatively easy to break through and 
shatter, by way of the mouth opening, the majority of 
the various septa connecting the columella with the outer 
wall of the shell. The apex of the shell is next smashed 
in and the apical septa destroyed, so releasing the 
columella, already set free in its oral portion. The shell 
is now open from end to end. The tool employed for 
breaking away the columella is a hammer fashioned on 
the principle of the well-known geologist’s hammer, 
sharp-edged on the one side and square on the other. 
The shell is now ready for the sawyer, who sits on the 
earthen floor tightly wedged between two short stakes 
of unequal length driven into the ground. Against the 
longer, measuring some 15 inches above the ground, the 
worker's back is supported, while against the shorter, 
