H

TOW MANY of the patrician ladies who grace the aristocratic social or other gatherings of civilization, their necks adorned with rows or clusters of shimmering pearls, devote a passing thought to the origin of the baubles which form such expensive and attractive adjuncts to the ornamentation of their drawing-room toilets?

Very few, I take it, have other than the vaguest idea, and would probably reply to a query upon the subject: "Why, of course, pearls are found in oysters."

Such, indeed, is the fact; but they are also found in other molluscs; some fine specimens having been discovered in mussels, and even in fresh-water clams. However, the chief source of supply is the oyster, and the principal fisheries are those of Ceylon; though there are other fisheries in Borneo, the Gulf of California, and the Caribbean Seas, of some importance, and the Chinese also pursue the industry with a considerable measure of suc

cess.

The pearl is the outcome of an abnormal secretory process generally be

gun by some small gritty foreign substance accidentally entering the shell and becoming entangled in the tissues so firmly that the animal is unable to eject it by muscular action; or a boring parasite, a cestode or species of tapeworm, invades the oyster through the shell and deposits its larvae in the flesh. This larvae is of globular form, of a type known as the cysticercus, and dies in its cyst.

It has been well said, by a Frenchman, I think, that: "The ornament associated in all ages with beauty and wealth is nothing but the sarcophagus of a worm."

Be the unwelcome substance what it may, a morsel of grit, splinter of wood, fragment of sea-shell, or the more obstinate larvae of the cestode, the oyster proceeds to obtain relief from the irritation and pain by enshrining the intruding particle in nacreous matter essentially the same as the lining of its shell, mother-of-pearl.

And there we have the pearl. Simple, isn't it?

The pearl hardens with a perfectly smooth surface, the shape depending entirely upon the form of the body covered and the position which it occupies in the living tissues, but usually it is either spherical, oval or pear shaped.

The finest pearls, those classified as of the "first-water," should be of perfect skin, regularly delicate in texture, free from all suspicion of specks and flaws, of clear translucent white color with subdued iridescent sheen, and in form mathematically spherical or symmetrically pear-shaped.

Sir David Brewster first demonstrated that the iridescence of substance is an optical phenomena due to the interference of rays of light reflected from microscopic corrugations of the surface of the pearl.

Another class of pearl, known as "perle bouton," is found attached to the shell, and when cut away is flat on one side and convex on the other.

Sometimes, in very old oysters, a pearl may be found buried completely in the substance of the shell, and it is

only discovered when splitting the matrix into layers for the manufacture of buttons, knife handles or other such articles as the mother-of-pearl is used for. Many valuable pearls have been destroyed in this process.

The most perfect pearl in existence is supposed to be that known as "La Pelligrina," possessed by the Czar of Russia, and now in the Zozima Museum at Moscow. It is a Ceylon pearl, found in 1835, and purchased by the Russian Crown in Teheran, Persia, in 1842. It is said that the Shah of Persia had the merchant buried alive for daring to sell it out of the country. It is perfectly globular in form and weighs twenty-eight carats.

The largest known pearl is in the Beresford-Hope collection, on exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It is an irregular spheroid in shape, weighs three ounces and measures four and a half inches in circumference.

It is commonly believed, though the Chinese government has persistently denied it, that the Chinese have for many centuries been producing pearls artificially, so to speak, by taking up the oysters, drilling minute holes in the shells and forcing into the interiors atoms of a character suited to excite the animals to use their secretory powers, then returning the oysters to the beds. After a certain lapse of time they are fished up again, with a tolerable certainty that some, at any rate, will bear value, though the great majority so treated die in the beds, or if sufficiently vigorous to survive the operation, manage to rid themselves of the intruding particles. This treatment is not permitted by the British authorities.

The Ceylon fisheries are situated in Mandar Bay, off the Northwest Coast, fifteen to twenty miles from the shore.

Oysters arrive at maturity, from the pearl-fisher's point of view, at the age of seven years, but the largest pearls are found generally in specimens of much greater age, judging from the appearance of their shells.