a small globe or ball used in necklaces; and made of different materials, as pearl, steel, garnet, coral, diamond, amber, crystal, pates, glafs, &c.—The Romanists make great use of beads in rehearsing their Ave-Marias, and Pater-nosters; and the like usage is found among the dervishes and other religious throughout the East, as well Mahometan as Heathen. The ancient Druids appear also to have had their beads, many of which are still found; at least if the conjecture of an ingenious author may be admitted, who takes those antique glafs globules, having a snake painted round them, and called adder-beads, or snake-buttons, to have been the beads of our ancient Druids. See ANGUIS, ORPHIOLOGY Index.

Beads are also used in speaking of those glafs globules vended to the savages on the coast of Africa; thus denominated, because they are strung together for the convenience of traffic.

The common black glafs of which beads are made for necklaces, &c. is coloured with manganese only: one part of manganese is sufficient to give a black colour to near twenty of glafs.

in Architecture, a round moulding, commonly made upon the edge of a piece of stuff, in the Corinthian and Roman orders, cut or carved in short embossments, like beads in necklaces.

Bead-Makers, called by the French paternofriers, are those employed in the making, stringing, and felling of beads. At Paris before the revolution there were three companies of paternofriers, or bead-makers; one who made them of glafs or crystal; another in wood and horn; and the third in amber, coral, jet, &c.