4 SHELL-MONEY. 
Aside from the use of Dentalium pretiosum as money, I 
saw at Crescent City a medicine man belonging to some of 
the tribes of the neighborhood, who had perforated the griz- 
zly partition which separates the nostrils, and having thrust 
into the hole thus made two of these shells, point to point, 
one from each side, for half the length of the shells, per- 
fected this nasal ornamentation by thrusting the feathers of 
some wild fowl into each of the hollow shells, producing an 
effect somewhat resembling a mustache. 
At Bodiga, much farther to the south on the coast of Cali- 
fornia, and near the old Russian settlement in Sonoma 
County, a place visited by me in the month of June, 1867, 
I was informed by some of the residents that the Indians of 
that neighborhood, living, however, somewhat back from the 
coast, used pieces of the bivalve shell known as Saxido- 
mus gracilis* for money, but why they should use this shell 
instead of the lustrous and pearly Haliotis rufescens, which 
is fully as abundant, it is impossible to discover. 
e use of shells or pieces of shell by the aborigines of 
America, was well known and recorded years ago. 
By reference to the Massachusetts Historical Collections, it 
will be seen that the early settlers of New England found 
that shells, or strings of shells, were used by the Indians, 
r money and ornament, and were called by them 
Wompompeage or Wampum. 
` The natives of some of the islands of the Indo-Pacific 
region use the shells of Litorina obesa, and they also make 
very pretty work by evenly fastening these shells to pieces 
of bark, which, when made, they use for personal ornament. 
In other of the islands, I have been informed that the banded 
variety of Nerita polita is used for the same purposes. 
Cyprea annulus is used by the Asiatic islanders to adorn 
their dress, to weight their fishing nets, and for barter. S 
mens of it were found py Layard in the ruins of Nim- 
roud.¢ o 
* Tapes gracilis Gould. — ¢ Woodward's Manual, second edition, p. 233 







