132 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1914. 
The Bureau of Education at Manila, P. I., furnished in exchange 
a series of five grades of knotted abaca fiber and implements for 
spinning and reeling the same and cotton. Each grade is nested in a 
basket and weighted down with gravel to prevent tangling while 
being reeled. After careful grading, the fibers are tied end to end, 
using a small, hard knot, following which the resultant continuous 
fiber is treated like a spun yarn. There is a very large trade in 
knotted abaca for both home consumption and export; it is woven 
into fabrics and hat braids. A tiré filet bedspread and bolster made 
by expert needlewomen in Porto Rico, a beautiful example of the 
handicraft work of these people, prepared as a wedding gift for a 
prominent American girl, was purchased. 
Besides textiles and textile materials, this division was the recip- 
ient of several important additions of other animal and vegetable 
products. The Bureau of Fisheries furnished a series of specimens 
of the species of fresh-water pearl shells from the Mississippi Valley 
which are used for the manufacture of buttons. It contains ex- 
amples of the large shells, furnishing as many as 60 buttons each, 
which were common 20 years or more ago, as well as of the very 
young shells, from which only a single button can be cut, and which 
are now being utilized. The Hawkeye Pearl Button Co., of Musca- 
tine, Iowa, presented a collection showing the different steps in the 
manufacture of pearl buttons, accompanied by a series of finished 
and carded buttons, and a model of the type of boat and drag used 
in collecting the shells in the fresh-water streams. The manufacture 
of pearl and vegetable ivory buttons is illustrated in a contribution 
from Messrs. Rothschild Bros. & Co., of New York, which relates 
principally to the utilization of marine forms furnishing mother- 
of-pearl, and includes specimens of raw and polished shells be- 
ionging to the genera Margaritifera, Trochus, Turbo, Haliotis, 
and Unio, besides seeds of a species of ivory nut palm of the 
genus Phytelephas. The making of buttons from vegetable ivory, 
furnished by seeds of Phytelephas, is also brought out in a gift from 
the Rochester Button Co., of Rochester, N. Y., which represents each 
stage in the process and contains samples of the waste produced in 
the sawing and turning of the raw material. The importation of 
these seeds or nuts for button making is rapidly increasing, the 
amount brought into this country in 1913 having reached 29,000,000 
pounds. 
A Mexican bridle of the old-fashioned type, made of finely cut 
and plaited rawhide and of perfect workmanship, was the only speci- 
men of leather received. It was obtained, through exchange, from 
Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, of Greenwich, Conn. A set of 18 Dutch 
standard sugar samples, a standard which, after being in use for 40 
years in grading raw sugars for revenue purposes, was abolished 
