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(4) FEEDING spouts. 
In the ordinary everyday life of the people of Southern 
India, the chank subserves several useful functions. 
Some of these have already been touched upon, but the 
most useful remains to be mentioned—that of small shells 
used as feeding spouts when weaning infants. The 
bazaars in every big Tamil town furnish these primitive 
utensils, made from undersized shells usually of the sub- 
fossil description obtained from the muddy lagoons near 
Jaffna in Ceylon. | 
The shells are prepared for market by breaking 
down parts of the inner portion of the terminal whorls 
just inside the mouth and by removing the central part 
of the columella. The canal-shaped canaliculum of the 
mouth is deepened and straightened to form a rough 
spout ; the exterior surface of the shell is rubbed down 
and upon it is engraved a rude pattern, usually in the 
form of a spiral scroll with a few star-shaped emblems; 
last of all it receives a thin coating of fine lime or white- 
wash to hide imperfections and improve the colour. For 
the purpose intended it is quite effective, but how far the 
crevices of the interior, by offering obstacles to efficient 
cleansing, harbour and promote the rapid growth of 
bacteria and so lead directly to infantile diarrhcea, it is 
difficult to say. If the shell be boiled daily, a very simple 
precaution and easier to do in the case of a chank than 
in that of a glass bottle, there would be no danger, but I 
fear this is seldom thought of. In feeding baby 
monkeys just taken from their mother I kave found 
this feeding shell most useful; the sight of the little 
creature hanging on with both fore-paws to the snell, 
half choking in its eagerness to swallow the milk and all 
the time trying to locate every noise and movement in 
the room with its great nervous eyes is one of the 
quaintest pictures imaginable. 
(wz) CURRENCY. 
That the chank once served a savage people asa 
form of currency is little known, but so it was in the 
Naga country of Assam until less than 50 years ago. 
Major-General John Butler who commanded an early 
expedition into the Naga hills, tells (oc. cz¢., p. 157) that 
he found the Nagas of many villages using chank-shells 
as currency with a fixed and thoroughly well-determined 
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