PARADISE KEY SAFFORD. 



425 



made by securing several of the largest shells together, with cordage 



made of agave or yucca fiber, which also served as the cable. An 



interesting fact connected with these objects is that similar utensils 



made of this same shell, easily recognizable by 



its " perverse " spiral, have been unearthed in 



the mounds of the valleys of the Mississippi and 



its tributaries, which tend to connect the Florida 



mound builders with those of our great inner 



basin. Objects made from the shells of Fulgur 



perversum taken from the mounds of Florida, 



Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 



and Missouri may be seen in the collections of 



the United States National Museum. Plate 55 



is a photograph by Cushing of a terrace faced 



with these shells ; plate 56 shows a ladle made of 



one of the shells with the inner whorls removed ; 



and figure 30 shows a spoon unearthed in 



Florida com- 

 pared with a 

 similar one 

 found in a 

 mound in 

 eastern Ten- 

 nessee. 1 



Nearly all 

 accounts of 

 the aborigi- 

 nal inhabit- 

 ants of Flor- 



ida refer to utensils made of 

 these shells, especially in connec- 

 tion with the celebrated " black 

 drink " ritual, in which the shells 

 were used as dippers and drink- 

 ing cups for serving this cere- 

 monial decoction. The earliest 

 illustrations, 2 however, evidently 

 drawn from memory, erroneously represented these utensils as being 

 made of a shell shaped like that of a nautilus instead of the species 

 actually used. 



Fig. 29. — Mattock ob 

 war-club made from 

 shell of Fulgur (Bu- 

 sycon) perversum, simi- 

 lar to SPECIMENS FOUND 

 in grates of the 

 mound-ecilders of the 

 Mississippi Valley. 



Fig. 30. — Utensils made of shells of 

 Fulgur (Busycon) perversum. a, Cup 

 in the United States National Mu- 

 seum from the west coast of South- 

 ern Florida ; b, perforated shell 

 from mound in Eastern Tennessee. 

 Reduced. 



1 See MacCurdy, in Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Congress of Ameri- 

 canists, p. 70, fig. 27. 1915. 



2 See Lemoine's illustration (1564) reproduced in the writer's paper on the Narcotic 

 plants and stimulants of the ancient Americans, in the Smithsonian Report for 1916, 

 pi. 14. 1917. 



