380 SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 



out a considerable portion of Central Africa, the cowrie is still tlie 

 current coin. In many parts of India, in Siam, and throughout the 

 Burmese empire, it is universally employed as small change, and has 

 a recognised though fluctuating value. About the middle of last cen. 

 tury, 2400 cowries were equivalent, in Bengal, to one rupee, but in- 

 creasing facilities of intercommunication have tended to multiply 

 them and depreciate their worth. The influence of European civi- 

 lization, under British rule, has in many districts displaced the pri- 

 mitive cowrie, by a copper and a silver currency, while the increasing 

 monetary transactions of the most favored districts lead to the cir- 

 culation even of the gold mohur, so that now, in Bengal and similar 

 centres of commercial exchange, it requires nearly an additional 

 thousand cowries to make up the value of the silver rupee. 



Corresponding to the cowrie currency of Asia and Africa, is the 

 use by the American Indians of the Korth West, of the ioqua, a shell 

 found on the neighboring shores of the Pacific, and employed by 

 them both for ornament and as money. The Chinooks and other 

 Indians wear long strings of ioqua shells as necklaces and fringes 

 to their robes. These are said to be procured only at Cape Flattery, 

 at the entrance of the Straits of De Tuca, where they are obtained 

 by a process of dredging, and have a value assigned to them increasing 

 in proportion to their size. This varies from about an inch and a 

 half to upwards of two inches in length. They are white, conical, 

 and slightly curved in form, and taper to a point. Their circumfer- 

 ence at the widest part does not greatly exceed the stem of a clay 

 tobacco pipe, and they are thin and translucent. Mr. Paul Kane 

 writes to me in reference to them : " A great trade is carried on 

 among all the tribes in the neighborhood of Vancouver's Island, 

 through the medium of these shells. They are valuable in proportion 

 to their length, and their value increases according to a fixed ratio, 

 forty shells being the standard number required to extend a fathom's 

 length. A fathom thus tested is equal in value to a beaver's skin, 

 but if shells can be found so far in excess of the ordinary standard 

 that thirty-nine are long enough to make the fathom, it is worth 

 two beavers' skins, if thirty-eight, three beavers' skins, and so on : 

 increasing in value one beaver skin for every shell less than the 

 standard number." 



S'o evidence has yet appeared to indicate the use of the marine or 

 fresh water shells of Europe as a species of currency during the era 



