ball.1 ALEUTIAN MASKS. 143 



furnished a pale yellow, but tbis I bave rarely seen. Perhaps it was 

 not permanent. The root of the alder was, and still is, used for color- 

 ing deer-skins a beautiful red-brown, but I have never seen it applied 

 to wooden ware or carvings. 



Amber from the lignite beds was made into rude beads, and esteemed 

 of extraordinary value. Other beads were made of bits of gypsum, 

 shale, small hollow bones, cut in lengths, and variously colored bits of 

 serpentine. I have never seen any nephrite or jadeite, which is not 

 rare on the continent, especially near Norton Sound where there is a 

 mine of it, and is much valued ; but perbaps it was considered so very 

 valuable as to escape the shell heap and the tomb. 



Note. — I take a last opportunity to insert here, out of its proper 

 place, a piece of valuable information which has reached me since this 

 paper was in type. I learn from M. Alp. Pinart, whose reputation as 

 an ethnologist is world wide, and who has recently spent six years ou 

 the Isthmus and in Central America, that the labret is still in use 

 among the savage tribes from Darien to Honduras. It is worn only by 

 the women, and is placed in the lower lip below the nose. The large 

 labrets figured by Dampier have passed away; the women now wear 

 (as among the Tlinkit) only a small button or a little silver pin. This 

 fact tills quite a gap in the previously stated chain of evidence as to the 

 distribution of labrets. 



