Xx Introduction. 
hundred cowries were given as a bridal dowry. To meet 
such exorbitant demands, especially in places where these 
shells could not be obtained locally, but had to be im- 
ported, the most valuable possessions of the people, cows, 
sheep and goats, were given in exchange for cowries in 
order to secure the social and magical advantages they 
were believed to bring. This was, I believe, the origin of 
the use of cowries as currency, and also incidentally how 
sheep and cattle came to occupy so definite a significance 
in early currencies. It may perhaps be suggestive of the 
original magical value of cowries that, according to tradi- 
tion, when these shells were first introduced among the 
Baganda, two of them were given in exchange for a 
woman. Ata later period two thousand five hundred of 
them were obtained in exchange for a cow to make the 
dowry, offered to the bride. 
' Asa further illustration from Baganda of the signifi- 
cance attached to this shell as an animating force, cowries 
were placed along with the deceased king’s jaw and 
umbilical cord.” Cowries were also offered to twins ; and 
if one of them died, a “double” was made for it, and 
supplied with these vitalising shells. Not only in East 
Africa, but also in many other places the cowry was thus 
brought into intimate relationship with the peculiar beliefs 
connected with “heavenly twins” and “doubles,” with 
the placenta and the soul. 
It also played a part in a variety of blood-letting 
ceremonies, such as circumcision and ear-piercing. 
In my essay on “ Ships as Evidence of the Migrations 
of Early Culture’ [ called attention to the fact that the 
early Egyptians believed in the possibility of animating 
‘* In ancient times the operculum of the shell Zirdo was called 
Umbilicus Veneris. 
't Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 29. 
EE EEE 
