186 Shells as evidence of the Migrations. 
with the ancient Chinese belief as evidenced in the cere- 
monial use of money-cowries in obsequies of the dead, 
As mentioned previously, in pre-Christian and later times, 
cowries were uscd in China, in association with rice, for 
stuffing the mouth of the dead. Wild rice, it might be 
added, also enters into the ritual of Ojibwa and Menomini 
ceremonies. The fact that the so-called “wild rice” of 
America is not identical with true rice cannot be raised 
as an objection to the identity of these practices: for 
the similarity which suggested the name “wild rice” to 
Evropean immigrants in America no doubt appealed with 
equal force to the earlier Asiatic rice-using immigrants. 
The apparent identity in the spitting out of cowries 
by the ‘logo priests of West Africa and by the medicine 
men of the Ojibwa and Menomini Indians has been noted 
already. The association of the money-cowry with the 
medicine bags used by the Sierra Leone cannibals at 
initiation ceremonies is a further remarkable parallel 
Some interesting. evidence of the early use of the 
money-cowry in North America is contained in an ex- 
haustive account on “Aboriginal Sites on Tennessee 
River,” by Mr. Clarence B. Moore.” In his description 
of the Roden Mounds, Marshall County, Alabama, this 
author informs us that in Burial No. 44, well in the body 
of mound A, were the remains of a skull, near which were 
fragments of a large marine univalve, and five shells, some 
much decayed, which had been pierced for stringing, like 
beads. These are pronounced by Dr. H. A. Pilsbry, the 
well-known American conchologist, to be examples of the 
imoney-cowry, Ciprea meneta, of Eastern Seas, Such 
shells have never been recorded before from an aboriginal 
mound in the United States. The careful investigation 
of the Roden mounds indicated that they had been built 
1*o 
Journ, Acad. Nat, Set. Phéilad., 2nd Ser., xvi., pt. ii, LOTS. 
