MEDICINAL AND ECONOMIC PRODUCTS 



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16,000,000 cowries in all. Cowries are imported to England 

 from India and other places for the purpose of exportation to 

 West Africa, to be exchanged for native products. The trade, 

 however, appears to be greatly on the decrease. At the port 

 of Lagos, in 1870, 50,000 cwts. of cowries were imported. 

 A banded form of Nerita polita was used as money in certain 

 parts of the South Pacific. The sandal -wood imported into 

 the China market is largely obtained from the New Hebrides, 

 being purchased of the natives in exchange for Ovulum angu- 

 losum, which they especially esteem as an ornament. Some- 

 times, as in the Duke of York group, the use of shell money 

 is specially restricted to certain 

 kinds of purchase, being employed 

 there only in the buying of swine. 

 Among the tribes of the north-west 

 coasts of America, the common 

 Dentalium indianorum [a tusk- 

 shell] used to form the standard 

 of value, until it was superseded, 

 under the auspices of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company, by blankets. A 

 slave was valued at a fathom of 

 from twenty-five to forty of these 

 shells, strung lengthwise. Inferior 

 or broken specimens were strung together in a similar way, but 

 were less highly esteemed; they corresponded more to our silver 

 and copper coins, while the strings of the best shells repre- 

 sented gold. The wampum (fig. 1231) of the eastern coast of 

 North America differed from all these forms of shell money, in 

 that it required a laborious process for its manufacture. Wam- 

 pum consisted of strings of cylindrical beads, each about a 

 quarter of an inch m length and half that breadth. The beads 

 were of two colours, white and purple, the latter being the more 

 valuable. Both were formed from the common clam ( Venus 

 mercenaries), the valves of which are often stained with purple 

 at the lower margins, while the rest of the shell is white. Cut 

 small, ground down, and pierced, these shells were converted 

 into money, which appears to have been current along the whole 

 seaboard of North America from Maine to Florida, and on the 

 Gulf Coast as far as Central America, as well as among the 



Fig. 1231. Indian Wampum. Reduced. 



