The Cowries. Venus Shells 



The enamel is much more brilHant than on any former layer, the 

 final polish being the last constructive effort of the mantle. 



Cowries are used for personal adornment among uncivilised 

 tribes. Overlapping rows of small ones cover the skin jackets 

 worn in Borneo. The harness of elephants and horses in India 

 are trimmed with cowry bands. Strung as beads, or sewed like 

 buttons on clothing they satisfy the primitive craving for personal 

 decoration in many regions. Among civilised people, in whom the 

 same instinct persists, the small blue-backed money cowry is 

 often seen joined in bracelets, each shell with a little cameo figure 

 cut in the back. Sleeve buttons, brooches, beads and small 

 charms are also made of these. Snuff-boxes, salt cellars, jewel 

 caskets and other articles are made of the large ones. Spoon 

 bowls, ring trays, whistles and figures of animals are some of the 

 incongruous objects into which these shells are transmuted. 

 Beautiful in their natural state, they rarely gain anything in this 

 attempted "improvement. " The price of the cowry is augmented 

 by the addition of ornamentation ; its value usually drops to zero 

 in the hands of the enterprising manufacturer of "souvenirs." 

 Could anything be more unseemly than a handsome tiger cowry, 

 its beauty defaced by etching upon it, with strong acids in ornate 

 letters and flourishes, the Lord's Prayer! This I found in 

 company with grotesque imitations of pigs and pug dogs, punch- 

 ladles and pin cushions, all made of cowries and jostling each 

 other on a crowded booth counter at a seashore summer resort. 



A sense of the eternal fitness of things steers the person of 

 taste by all such vulgarities; but so long as there are buyers 

 these things will be made, and we shall see them decorating (?) 

 mantelpieces and "what-nots" in comfortable American homes. 

 Beware the person who, seeing a beautiful sea shell, undertakes 

 "to make something out of it." The result is almost always 

 inartistic, and useless. If we have fallen unthinkingly into the 

 snare, let us atone for our fault by destroying the poor, mutilated 

 thing forthwith. 



The Money Cowry (C moneta, Linn.) varies from deep 

 canary yellow to white; the back of variety annula is encircled by a 

 faint ring of dull red or orange. The shells are heavy, with thick, 

 angled margins, smooth or noduled bases and blunt teeth in the 

 apertures. In length the forms vary from | to i ^ inches. They live 

 on the reefs of coral islands, but are happiest on sandy mud fiats. 



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