28o The Co7nmercial Products of the Sea. 



Museum. Cowry shells are also strung like beads, or 

 sewed like buttons on their dress by Brinjari women as 

 personal ornaments, and are in circulation as money in 

 the Hyderabad State, and in other parts of the country. 



The valuable cargoes of sandal-wood obtained in some 

 of the Pacific Islands for the China market are, in the first 

 instance, purchased from the New Hebrides by means of a 

 shell — the Ovithim angidosimi, a white porcelanous variety 

 of cowry with a violet-coloured lip — which is found in the 

 Friendly Islands, but never in the sandal-wood region. 

 This shell is so highly esteemed as an ornament by the 

 natives of the New Hebrides, that for one shell they will 

 give in exchange a ton of sandal-wood. The trading 

 captains go expressly to the Tongan Archipelago for the 

 shells, where they sell at a Spanish dollar each. 



As objects of decoration, certain shells have always 

 been in great demand among savage and semi-civilized 

 peoples. 



A substance pleasing to the eye, and easily worked, 

 such as is offered by nature in the shells of marine and 

 fresh-water molluscs, could not fail to attract the attention 

 of men in the earliest times. The love of personal adorn- 

 ment, moreover, already manifests itself in the lowest stages 

 of human development, and shells being, above other 

 natural productions, particularly fitted to be made into 

 ornaments, it is not surprising that they were employed 

 for that purpose in all parts of the world. The North 

 American tribes made an extensive use of the shells of the 

 seacoast as well as those of their rivers, and fossil marine 

 shells were also employed as ornaments. The valves of 

 recent marine molluscs, indeed, must have been widely 

 circulated by barter, considering that they are found, in 

 the shape of ornaments, and sometimes of utensils, in the 



