There are plenty of imitation wampum belts, usually made of small shells or ordinary beads. The genuine belts are flat and strong, and the little shell cylinders nearly all of the same size. The imitations are much more irregularly and carelessly made, and they are often without any colour but white.
A common form of book in Oriental countries consists of long narrow strips of palm leaf, kept together by two strings run through holes near each end. The writing upon the leaves is carried right along the length of each leaf in successive lines, and is scratched in, and usually strengthened by means of lamp black rubbed over it so as to stick in the scratches.
Fig. 11.—Oriental palm-leaf book.
This form of book rests by itself. Apparently it has never altered materially, neither has it in any way affected the production of the book as we know it. The palm leaves are brittle, they are troublesome to turn over, and are likely to split and break where the cord touches them. But the leaves are frequently made of stronger materials than palm leaf, some of them being of gold, silver, or gilded copper, and in these cases the lettering is engraved or punched. Others are written on plates of ivory, the letters being gilded, others again on plates of lacquer with letters inlaid with mother-of-pearl; indeed, the variety is large.
The leaves are always enclosed between two covers of stronger make but of the same shape, and these covers are often very elaborately ornamented. Some of them have exquisite carved work and inlaid work and others are painted. In the case of Indian examples they are often messed over with red stains. When this is found the manuscript has belonged to some shrine, and worshippers have daubed it with rice and red paint as a sort of peace offering. The strings with which the leaves are bound together are also sometimes handsomely ornamented.
Ancient rock inscriptions, tallies, quipus and wampums are all more or less ideographic, and among trade signs there are still many ideographs in common use, some of them of considerable antiquity. There are the three golden balls of the pawnbroker, which mean that money can be borrowed there. They are derived from the coat of arms of the Medici of Lombardy. The Lombards were mediæval bankers and money lenders, and for their badge they took three of the golden balls, or pills, out of the Medici coat.
These balls varied in number and colour, they were sometimes red, and sometimes blue, and three blue balls upon a white ground was one of the mediæval signs used by money lenders, but the three golden balls have proved more lasting.
Another old ideograph is the white barber’s pole, with its red spiral, the image of the red bandage used to tie up an arm which had just been bled. It was originally the mark of a barber surgeon, but the barber still uses it although he no longer bleeds his clients. An old sign for a barber is also a shaving dish. This is oftener seen on the continent than it is here.
The embowed arm holding a hammer is an old sign of a gold beater, and is generally itself gilded. It is clearly an ideograph, as is also the fishing rod with a golden fish, which is a usual sign over a fishing tackle maker’s shop. A modern instance of the same kind is a gilded ham which is not uncommonly seen over provision shops, quite a modern sign. The rapidly disappearing Highlander taking snuff is another modern ideograph. There are plenty more of such signs, most of which tell their story directly and simply, while others, the older ones particularly, may at first seem arbitrary, but often a little examination will reveal a simple origin.