368 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
found by the writer on a fort site near Baldwinsville, a few years 
older than the last mentioned. ‘The outer side, next the epidermis, 
is ground flat, while the nacre on the other side is left undisturbed. 
The central perforation was mostly made from one side. Such or- 
naments are extremely rare. With so common and fine a material 
this is at first surprising, but it may have been neglected because 
common. A worked piece of this which is unfinished, is from the 
fort west of Cazenovia. A thin ornament of this, represented in 
fig. 220, has also been found in Pompey. Fig. 125 is an unper- 
forated disk of pearl from the mission fort site at Onondaga lake. 
Unio complanatus shells, however, are abundant on early 
Mohawk sites and some others, the mollusk having been used as 
food. The other and finer species rarely appear. Fig. 38 is a 
string made up mostly of very small disks from near Munnsville, 
and has been already described. Fig. 266 is a Cayuga bead with 
an inside rimming. ‘This is a rare feature. | 
Massive beads 
Mr Holmes gives several forms of massive beads on page 224 of 
Art im shell, some of which are frequent and fine on recent New 
York Iroquois sites. It must be remembered that most shell ar- 
ticles in this state west of Albany are not prehistoric. His plate 
34 gives examples of a class which he says “are more decidedly 
aboriginal in character than those of any other group, and are 
without doubt of very ancient origin. They are widely distributed, 
and have been found in graves and mounds covering an area out- 
lined by Massachusetts, Canada West, Minnesota, Missouri, and the 
gulf and Atlantic coasts.” 3 
Some of those represented are modern in character and are found 
in New York. Others have not yet appeared there. His fifth ex- 
ample is from Monroe county, N. Y., and presumably from the site 
near Honeoye Falls, where shell pins and European articles have 
been found. The form was largely used there and elsewhere in the 
last half of the 17th century. The Swanton bead belongs to the 
same period, and some California forms differ little from recent ex- 
amples in New York. While long cylindric shell beads or wam- 
