A 
1883.] Aboriginal Quarries—Soapstone Bowls, etc. 587 
-` This industry is carried on in the town of Adorf, where many 
hundreds of thousands of mussels are worked up annually. If it 
were not for raw material received from other parts of Europe the 
Saxon beds would soon be depopulated. A similar manufacture 
has sprung up in parts of Bohemia and Bavaria. Naturally other 
sorts of pearl shell are worked up in the same shops, especially 
Haliotis iris Chemn., from New Zealand, and Turbo marmoratus 
L., from the East Indies; Turbo pica L., from the West Indies 
and the Californian “ abalones,” Haliotis cracherodii, splendens and 
rufescens. 
Japan produces some small but brilliant pearls from her fresh- 
water mussels, Cristaria spatiosa and Anodonta japonica, especi- 
ally the former, 
In China the immense but thin-shelled Dipsas plicatus is made 
use of to produce miracles by the monks of a Buddhist monas- 
tery at Pú sa ch'i p’ang. Small stamped tinfoil images of Bud- 
dha are slipped between the mantle and the shell at the front end 
of the animal, and it is then placed in an aquarium or tank. In 
two or three months they are covered by a coating of pearl which 
fastens them to the inside of the shell while the embossed features 
of the image stand out in relief As many as twenty of these 
“miraculous” Buddhas are sometimes found ona single valve. 
The pious pilgrims, in ignorance of the means by which they are 
produced, consider this the highest testimony to the supernatural 
er and powers of the venerated founder of their sect, 
while the monastery reaps a handsome income from the same. 
(To be continued.) 
:0: 
ABORIGINAL QUARRIES—SOAPSTONE BOWLS AND 
THE TOOLS USED IN THEIR MANUFACTURE. 
BY J. D. McGUIRE. 
ia recent years soapstone quarries showing undoubted evi- 
dences of having been regularly worked by early American 
races, have been discovered in several of the States of the Union, 
and it is highly probable that they will be found wherever the 
šoapstone itself is met with of a character suitable for being 
worked.” The manner of working the quarries, the tools used in 
them, as well as the vessels there made are as yet comparative 
