Many large pearls of pear, egg, or drop shape, and some round, are used as pendants, to be hung on slender gold neck chains, or suspended from brooches of diamonds. They are bored at the smaller end to a depth of about one-eighth of an inch, the hole is filled with a composition which hardens rapidly, and in this a gold wire, looped at one end for connecting, is inserted. Formerly the pearl was drilled quite through and the suspending wire riveted, but this is rarely done now as it lessens the value of the pearl and destroys the perfect pendant effect. This is a European fashion. The Chinese mount pearls by boring into the body of the pearl at two, three or four points and inserting the bent ends of spreading wires so that the gem is clasped as by spreading finger tips. Pear-shaped pearls were used in Rome for pendant purposes as now and were known as "elenchi." After the Roman fashion of "crotalia" or "castanet" eardrops had passed, drop pearls continued in more or less favor throughout succeeding centuries as eardrops, the matching of one nearly doubling the value of both. Of late, egg and pear-shaped pearls have been used largely as heads for scarf pins. They are drilled and set on a gold wire or "pegged" as it is called, in the manner described for pendants but with the smaller end resting upon a light gold ring soldered to the scarf pin, or in a small cup, so that the pressure, while inserting the pin, is distributed over the body of the pearl and upon the end, instead of upon the inner wall in contact with the end of the pin. The Persians used pearls largely in the jewelling of royal headgear, for Pompey is said to have brought home twenty crowns of pearls with the loot from his eastern raid. Hindu princes strung them on straight wires of equal length and bound a number of them together, to be fastened as pompons or aigrettes, to their turbans. They encrusted and edged their robes with them as also did the royalties and nobles of Europe during the middle ages. Seed pearls were strung in lengths of four to six feet and the strands twisted together like a rope. This fashion continues to this day, such ropes of pearls sometimes measuring five feet in length. The semi-barbarous Indian tribes of America did not confine the use of pearls altogether to personal adornment. They decorated their idols, state canoes, the handles of the paddles, and the figures in their temples with them, and they buried enormous quantities in the sepulchres with their dead. There is no evidence that this latter form of extravagance was at any time general in Asia or Europe, but Julius Cæsar made a buckler of British pearls which he hung up in the temple of Venus Genetrix after dedicating it to her.