SHELL-MONEY, a medium of exchange common to many primitive races, consisting of sea shells or pieces of them worked into beads or artificially shaped. Shell-money appears to have been almost universal, being found in America, Asia, Africa and Australia. The shell used by the Indians of Alaska and Cal ifornia was the Dentalium pretiosum, a species of tusk-shell. The ligua, the highest denomination of their coinage, consisted of twenty-five shells strung together, which from end to end made a total measurement of a fathom (6ft.) or thereabouts, equalling in English coinage about £5o.
But the shell most used by primitive peoples has always been the Cypraea inoneta, or money-cowry (see COWRY). It is most abundant in the Indian Ocean, and is collected more particularly in the Maldive Islands, in Ceylon, along the Malabar coast, in Borneo and other East Indian islands, and in various parts of the African coast from Ras Hafun to Mozambique. It was for merly in familiar use in Bengal, where, though it required 3,840 to make a rupee, the annual importation was valued at about £30,000. In western Africa it was, until past the middle of the 19th century, the usual tender. The use of the cowry currency gradually spread inland in Africa, and about 185o Heinrich Barth found it fairly recognized in Kano, Kuka, Gando and even Tim buktu. In the countries on the coast the shells were fastened to
gether in strings of 4o or zoo each, so that so or 20 strings represented a dollar; but in the interior they were laboriously counted one by one. The districts mentioned above received their supply of kurdi, as they were called, from the west coast; but the regions to the north of Unyamwezi, where they were in use under the name of simbi, were dependent on Muslim traders from Zanzibar. The shell of the land-snail, Achatina monetaria, cut into circles with an open centre, has been long used as coin in Benguella, Portuguese West Africa. In parts of Asia Cypraea annulus, the ring cowry, was commonly used. In north Australia different shells were used, one tribe's shell being absolutely value less in the eyes of another tribe. In the islands north of New Guinea the shells are broken into flakes. Two shells are used by these Pacific islanders, one a cowry found on the New Guinea coast, and the other the common pease shell. As late as 1882 local trade in the Solomon Islands was carried on by means of a coin age of shell beads, small shells laboriously ground down to the required size by women.