ETHN0-C0NCH0L06Y-A STUDY OF PRIMITIVE MONEY. 



By Robert E. C. Stearns. 



The study of Nature leads through enchanted fields, full of new sur- 

 prises and fresh delights. Whichever path we pursue, vistas open on 

 either side equally inviting, with every charm of life and form and 

 color, ever changing but never old. 



" Who," wrote P. P. Carpenter, "has not admired the beauty of shells, 

 the luster of the Cowries, the polish of the Olives, the painting of the 

 Cones, the varied layers of the Cameos, the exquisite nacre of Mother- 

 of Pearl? Who has not listened to the mysterious 'sound of the sea' 

 in the Whelks and Helmets, or wondered at the many chambers of the 

 Nautilus? What child ever went to the sea-shore without picking up 

 shells; or what lady ever spurned them as ornaments of her parlor ? 

 Shells are at once the attraction of the untutored savage, the delight 

 of the refined artist, the wonder of the philosophic zoologist, and the 

 most valued treasures of the geologist. They adorn the sands of sea- 

 girt isles and continents now, and they form the earliest 'footprints on 

 the sands of time ' in the history of our globe. The astronomer wan- 

 dering through boundless space with the grandest researches of his in- 

 tellect and the most subtle workings of his analysis, may imagine indeed 

 the history of past time and speculate on the formation of globes, but 

 his science presents us with no records of the past ; but the geologist, 

 after watching the ebb of the ocean tide, examines into the soil on the 

 surface of the earth and finds in it a book of chronicles, the letters of 

 which are not unknown hieroglyphics but familiar shells." 



Conchology, or the study of shells, in itself one of the most delightful 

 studies, in its ethnological aspect is also full of interest. 



Aside from the use of various species of mollusks as articles of human 

 food all the world over, we find that several forms belonging to this di- 

 vision of the animal kingdom have in the past been curiously interwoven 

 with the affairs of men, both in civilized and barbarous communities. 



Some of these are still in use as of old, but to a comparatively limited 

 extent. 



As we follow the direction of ethno conchological inquiry over the 

 pathway of dead centuries, we catch glimpses of great events — events 

 phenomenal, picturesque, aud impressive ; important in their time, char- 

 acteristic of the period or epoch which they mark and in which they oc- 



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