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 

 iig. 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 in 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." 



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 warn- 



