1 8 JACKSON, Use of Coivry -shells for Currency, Amulets, etc. 



in England they are occasionally noticed worn in long 

 strings by travelling gypsies. 



According to Professor Ridgeway, 53 cowries are still 

 used, combined with a Christian medal, in Corfu as a 

 child's amulet ; and also in Montenegro. 



In the following pages frequent references will be 

 found to the use of cowry-shells as amulets of magical 

 import in Africa, Asia, Pacific Islands, and elsewhere. 



The custom of decorating the trappings of horses with 

 cowries, doubtless with the object of averting the evil eye, 

 is found in Persia as well as in India (where elephants 

 carry such ornament), in Hungary and in Norway. 

 And according to Ridgeway {pp. cit., p. 248), Mr. F. W. 

 Hasluck, when travelling in the Morea in 1907, saw a boar's 

 tusk charm on a horse in Triphylia, with a pendant of a 

 cross formed of four cowries sewn on leather. 



Lane, in his " Modern Egyptians," N informs us that 

 cowries are still used by the people of Egypt, and are 

 regarded as a protection against the evil eye. With this 

 object they are often attached to the trappings of camels, 

 horses, and other animals, as well as to the caps of children. 

 Pickering 55 remarks that on ascending the Nile toKenneh, 

 the modern capital of the Thebaid, about 30 miles below the 

 site of ancient Thebes, cowries were seen used as money 

 by market women of the Ethiopian [? Soudanese] race. 

 Culin, in his " Chess and Playing Cards," 5(i reports that in 

 the streets of "Cairo" at the Columbian Exposition was a 

 family of Bishareen from the Eastern desert, near Assouan, 



5:! W. Ridgeway, "The Origin of the Turkish Crescent," fount. Roy. 

 Anthro. Inst., G. B. and I., vol. 38 (1908), p. 248, pi. 21, fig. 23. 



B * E. W. Lane, " Modern Egyptians," vol. i., 1849, p. 343. 



55 Pickering, "Races of Man"' (Bonn's Ed.), 1863, as quoted by 

 Stearns, " Ethno-conchology," Rept, U.S. Nat. Jl/us., 1887, (1889), p. 303. 



66 Stewart Culin, "Chess and Playing Cards," Rept. U.S. Nat. Mas., 

 1S96, (189S), p. 815 footnote. 



