PRATT ON SHELL MONEY. -39 



without a doubt to be a varietij of Anculosa pnerosa, one of several spe- 

 cies I have received from the rivers of Alabama and East Tennessee. I 

 have ground down one of these shells to correspond with the ancient 

 specimens, and it does correspond perfectly. 



It is easy to see that they must have had something 

 else than their beauty to recommend them, and they 

 are exceedingly undesirable as ornaments. In the 

 same rivers are found many far handsomer shells, and 

 certainly none less so than these. Upon examination 

 it is quite evident that they were not beautified by pol- 

 ishing. The shell in its natural condition is too thin 

 to admit of that. Of course it is not improbable that 

 several species of the same genus, or of closely allied 

 genera, may have been used in this way, but they are 

 all thin, and the differences among the specimens we 

 FIG. 2.-xaturai Size, j^j^^g (souie 200 in number) are so small as to render 

 it highly probable that these, at least, are all of the same species. Many 

 of them are considerably decayed and broken, yet they generally retain 

 the principal portion of the shell not much injured. 

 What were they for V 



PRIMITIVE CURRENCIES. 



As soon as a people become sufficiently advanced to adopt a system, 

 however crude, of " division of labor," each doing chiefly that for 

 which he has a particular taste or capacity, and exchanging his com- 

 modities for those which he cannot so easily produce with his own 

 hands, the inconvenience of the direct exchange and transfer of arti- 

 cles in bulk will become apparent to them, and as a matter of fact, it 

 has been found that they soon, even while in a very barbarous condition, 

 wall adopt some article of more or less, or even of no intrinsic value, as a 

 representative of value, which article, or perhaps several of them of dif- 

 ferent kinds, they will, by common consent, give and receive in exchange 

 for articles of comfort or necessity. 



A great variety of very dissimilar things have been made to serve the 

 purposes of a currency among the different nations and tribes of the 

 world. In the East India Islands and many parts of Africa, the small 

 '•cowry" — as it is commonly called, the Cypra'arno)ieta [the specific name 

 " moneta" relates to this fact)— which is abundant in the waters of that 

 region, is extensively used, and doubtless has been for ages, as a circu- 

 lating medium. Baird's Dictionary of Natural History states that many 

 tons of these shells are imported into Great Britain, and exported for 

 barter with the native tribes of Western Africa. It is said that as many 

 as sixty tons were brought in 1848, and nearly 300 tons in 1849 to Liver- 

 pool alone. They are called " Guinea money" (referring to the African 

 coast where they are used), and are, or have been used in the slave trade. 



According to Chamber's Encyclopaedia, " In Central Africa purchases 

 are made and debts paid by strings of beads or coils of brass wire." 



