Use of Cowry-shells for Currency, Amutlets, etc. 127 
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The use of cowries as currency and as amulets or 
charms has been frequently discussed in ethnological 
memoirs. From this literature it is clear, though the fact 
has not always been realised or sufficiently emphasised by 
the authors, that cowries have been for ages regarded and 
‘even reverenced as charms in hunting and fishing, and as 
amulets against the evil eye. In fishing, especially in the 
Pacific Islands, they are attached to the nets to ensure 
luck, being misnamed “ net-sinkers”” by many writers on 
ethnology. They have been, and in many places are 
still, associated with marriage, with the object of securing 
communion with the spirit of fertility, supposed to be 
indwelling in the cowry. In like manner they are used 
in some places as offerings to rivers and springs in order 
to ensure that the rivers will run and springs flow. 
In the following pages an attempt is made to show some 
of the many uses of cowries in different parts of the world. 
The remarkable manner in which some of the customs, in 
which cowries play an important part, crop up in widely- 
scattered localities is very significant, and goes far to 
prove a common centre of origin for these practices. It 
is altogether unreasonable to assume that exactly similar 
customs of so peculiar and wholly arbitrary a nature and 
identical beliefs concerning the cowry could have arisen 
independently among isolated groups of people. 
The best and most comprehensive work on the subject of 
shell-money is that by Dr. O. Schneider, on “ Muschelgeld- 
Studien.”® This work contains some 180 pages dealing 
with the subject, of which about 72 pages are devoted to 
an excellent summary of the extensive literature relating 
to cowry-currency. Some use has been made of this 
work in the compilation of the present chapter, as will 
6 Dr. Oskar Schneider, ‘* Muschelgeld-Studien” (Nach dem hinter- 
lassenen Manuskript bearbeitet von Carl Ribbe). Herausgegeben vom 
Verein fiir Erdkunde zu Dresden. Dresden, 1905. 
