Bead (A. S. head, prayer; Dan. bede, to pray), a small perforated body, usually globular, made of various materials, and used as an ornament or to number prayers. Beads are worn in the form of a chain by stringing them together. The wearing of beads for ornaments is of very great antiquity. The Egyptians, besides wearing them, adorned their mummies with them. The Egyptians, and probably the Phoenicians, made glass beads more than 3,000 years ago. The Old Testament often refers to the wearing of beads, as in Canticles: "Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold," chains in this passage signifying perforated articles. Beads made of marine shells were used from remote traditional times by the New England Indians as a currency, under the name of wampum, and were also worn in a belt, called wampumpaque. Schoolcraft gives an interesting account of the discovery of beads of various forms and materials in Isle Ronde, Lake Huron. Necklaces and bracelets made of beads of metals, shells, teeth, coral, seeds of plants, and other materials, are described by nearly all travellers among primitive peoples. Beads, principally of glass, but of other materials also, are in common use among the tribes of Africa as a currency, and are carried there in great quantities by travellers.

In the Roman Catholic church, beads, in the form of chaplets, are used in saying the rosary, a series of prayers to the Blessed Virgin. "St. Cuthbert's beads " was the name given to a chaplet of beads made from the joints of the stems of fossil encrinites. (See Rosary.) The worshippers of the grand lama use a string of beads in their religious ceremonies. The Chinese chaplet contains 108 beads, and is worn as a necklace; some of the beads denote the rank of the wearer. The Mohammedans use a chaplet of beads, which they count with their fingers while reciting the 99 qualities of God mentioned in the Koran. - Murano, a small island near Venice, and Birmingham, England, are the principal seats of the manufacture of glass beads. They are made from tubes, which are cut into pieces of the desired length, the sharp edges being then rounded by fusing, either with the blowpipe or by the application of heat in some other mode. At Murano a mixture of fine sand and charcoal, to prevent the pieces from fusing together, is stirred with them, when they are agitated in a red-hot iron pan which rounds them.

The core of sand is then easily removed.