20 JACKSON, Distribution of the Shell-Purple Industry. 



shell. Many of the specimens of this species had a 

 portion of the body whorl broken away " as if for the 

 purpose of more conveniently extracting the animal." 

 The same species is recorded from the Okadaira Shell 

 Mound at Hitachi by J. Jijima and C. Sasaki, 77 who also 

 call attention to the fact of the specimens having almost 

 always an irregular opening in their body whorl as if 

 made for facilitating the extraction of the animal. 



Why the shells of this particular species should be 

 broken and not the others is remarkable. The idea that 

 such a procedure was solely to facilitate the extraction of 

 the animal for food purposes does not appear to be con- 

 clusive. A far greater significance is attached to such an 

 occurrence when one considers that Rapana bezoar belongs 

 to the purple-bearing family, Muricidce, and is closely 

 allied to Purpura. It is not improbable, therefore, that 

 the object in breaking the shells was to obtain purple for 

 dyeing purposes. That these ancient people were not 

 wholly ignorant of textiles is evidenced by the occurrence 

 of spindle-whorls associated with the pottery and shells 

 of the mounds. 



In the New World we have ample evidence of the 

 practice of this ancient industry at several places in Cen- 

 tral America, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

 Here the species employed is Purpura patula, which is 

 plentiful in the West Indies, and on rocks between high 

 and low tide levels on both the Atlantic and Pacific 

 coasts of Central /\merica. It resembles the Purpura 

 hcemastoma of the Mediterranean, one of the species used 

 by the ancient Tyrian dyers, and which, as previously 

 mentioned, is still used by the Minorcan fishermen to 

 mark their linen. 78 



77 Ibid., Appendix : No. 2542, 1882. 



78 See Lacaze-Duthiers, " Nat. Hist, of Purple of Ancients," Proc. Roy. 

 Soc. London, x., i860, p. 583. 



