270 
MISSION TO ASHANTEE, 
to the fetish ; and on rising from their chairs or stools, their attend- 
ants instantly lay them on their sides, to prevent the devil (whom 
they represent to be white) from slipping into their master's places. 
suspended around the neck, as the perforation is not sufficiently large to admit the 
finger." 
The bead engraved in Tumulus No. 9, resembles closely a coarse sort of bead, still 
manufactured in Syria, brought over by Dr. Meryon. The glass globes dug up in 
Lincolnshire, and presented by Sir Joseph Banks to the British Museum, are very hke 
a distinct sort of aggry bead, dug by the natives even more rarely than the others, but 
not larger than a moderate sized apple : they are more opaque than the other beads, and 
the ground or body is generally black, speckled confusedly with red, white, and yellow. 
Aggry is the generic, not the abstract name ; ' awynnee ' is head, but aggry is an 
exotic word no native can explain. When first I heard of similar beads having been 
lately dug in India, I associated for an instant the expectation that it might have been in 
the neighbourhood of Agra, and thus have thrown some light on the name; but it 
appears they were found in Malabar. I am indebted for the following account of this 
interesting discovery to a gentleman lately returned from India. " The bead you sent 
me is more like those I saw in India, than any I have seen before ; but it is thicker 
and shorter ; neither does the material of which it is formed exactly agree with those in 
India, which appear to be of a red glass, very like red carnelian (such, however, are 
frequent among the Aggry beads) with white lines of enamel, inlaid, at it were, in the 
body of the bead. I gave these to a friend in India, who promised to send them to the 
Asiatic Society in Calcutta. The circles of stone in which these beads have been found, 
abound most in Malabar, in the neighbourhood of Calicut; but I have seen them in 
other parts of India, and I am of opinion that they might be traced throughout the whole 
of the southern peninsula. They are formed of large masses of rough stones, placed 
round in irregular circles, some of very large extent, some of smaller : they appear so 
much like natural rocks, that most persons would pass them unobserved. Several of 
these circles about three years since were excavated, in the vicinity of Calicut, and in the 
centre of each of them we found, at the depth of about five feet, a large earthen jar of 
the same shape as those found in Wiltshire, as near as we could judge, for it was broken 
to pieces : it was about four or five feet deep, its mouth in general cldsed with a square 
piece of grttnite: the beads were found at the bottom of these jars with some pieces of 
iron, apparently parts of swords and spears. There was an iron javelin found in one of 
these places, tolerably perfect : it was about five feet long, with a large iron knob at one 
end of it. In the centre of one of the circles we came to a flight of seven steps, which led 
