IN Mr. Wilfred Jackson's recent work, Shells as Evidence 

 of the Migrations of Early Culture (Manchester Uni- 

 versity Press), will be found a very erudite account of the 

 uses to which certain sea-shells are put (the cowrie, as 

 money, for 4 instance, is familiar to everybody) and the 

 customs and associations which have grown up around 

 them. This in itself is a valuable contribution to know- 

 ledge ; but of greater importance is the light shed on a 

 thorny question long debated by ethnologists. When we 

 find a story or an unusual custom in two or more distant 

 localities, and are convinced that these have been where 

 they are from very early times, are we to suppose that 

 they have had a common source or that they have in- 

 dependently originated ? Where the tale is an obvious 

 one, such as the parable of the body and its members, 

 which is not only Biblical but found in other sacred 

 writings, it is easy to suppose that it may have occurred 

 independently to different people in different parts of 

 the world. But when we see that there are something like 

 three hundred and fifty variants of " Cinderella " scat- 

 tered all over the world, or that, in quite remote places^ 

 far divided from one another, what we call " The Man 

 in the Moon " is supposed to be a hare or a rabbit, a 

 legend which underlies the immortal tale of " The Tar 

 Baby," then it becomes difficult to believe that such ideas 

 can have had other than a common origin. 



Mr. Jackson debates this point with great knowledge 

 and skill, beginning with the question of the purple dye 

 extracted from shell-fish (chiefly Murex) and subsequently 

 dealing with the conch and chank, " old Triton's wreathed 

 horn " ; pearls and pearl-shells ; and cowries and their 

 uses. Not everybody who has heard of " Tyrian purple " 

 and read of the remarkable industry in that dye associated 

 with the names of Tyre and Sidon, is aware that the secret 

 of the shell-purple seems, like so many other secrets, to 

 have first been discovered in Crete. From that place it 

 spread to all the shores of the Mediterranean, a fact easily 

 understood. It spread to England and Ireland ; and, as 

 it was known in Asia and in South and Central America, 

 it must have spread to those parts of the world unless 

 it was there independently discovered, as, of course, it 

 might have been. When, however, we place side by side 

 with these facts the other remarkable things which are 

 detailed in this book with regard to other shells, it becomes 

 clear that the dissemination theory offers the only tenable 

 impossible to see how otherwise we 



