159 
XXV. ACCOUNT 
OF PAWPAW OR COWRY SHELLS, FOUND IN DORCHESTER. 
In a letter to the Hon. John Davis, Esq. 
_ By Rev. THADDEUS MASON HARRIS, r. a. a. 
asada guia 
Dorchester, October 22, 1806. 
DEAR SIR, i Kiet mr 
AGREEABLY to your request I make the following statement, 
which you may communicate to the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, if you think worthy of their notice. . 
In the summer of 1802 I procured several loads of mud from a 
kind of pond-hole in Dorchester for the purpose of making a compost 
manure for myggarden. As it lay ina heap in the barn yard, I found 
my children busily employed in picking from it the small shells call. 
ed pawpaws, or more properly cowries ; and, in raking open the pile, 
they gathered, I believe, more than a quart.. As the pile was level. 
led, many more were collected; and we are daily finding them on the 
ground, where it was spread. My. curiosity was much excited’ by 
the circumstance; especially as I had never met with the cyprea mo- 
neta on our shores, and did not know that it had been discovered on. 
the coast. Accordingly I visited the place, whence the mud was tak- 
en, and found it full of water in consequence of a heavy shower of 
rain ;, and indeed it is rarely quite dry ; but on the bank there were 
many more shells of the same kind in the mud, that had been thrown 
out. Upon examination it appeared, that this was once the head of a 
creek, and, within the recollection of an aged man in the neighbour- 
hood, was filled every high tide. About two rods below the pond, 
and on the border of what was formerly salt marsh, is a road, which 
