S-"* S. Y. 124., May 16. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



401 



muscles are abundant ; they are brought to the 

 shore by bnat-loads. On the shore is a rough and 

 primitive boiling apparatus, simply a fixed caul- 

 dron Avith fireplace beneath. The muscles are 

 thrown in by bushels, boiled down, and mashed 

 into a sort of pulp ; the pearls are then without 

 much difficulty got out, as they sink like a sedi- 

 ment to the bottom of the pan. 



A little daughter of mine (a child eight years 

 old), who was naturally very intent on making 

 the most of an opportunity of pearl-seeking, and 

 who had the hint given that her best chance 

 would be with the oldest and largest muscles, 

 brought home from the shore one afternoon a se- 

 lection of less than twenty, certainly fine ones. 

 From these she extracted six or eight pearls ; but 

 this result is much higher than the average, the 

 fish having been picked specimens. There were 

 two of them about the size of the head of the 

 largest sort of pin, the others were much smaller. 

 The colours varied from very bright to very poor. 



The Scotch pearls are the production of fresh- 

 water muscles, animals of larger dimensions than 

 the marine muscles, and unlike them in the colour 

 of the shell, which resembles the hue of the stones 

 in the river-bed in which the fresh-water muscles 

 lie, and occasions a little difficulty in finding them. 

 The river Ken in Kircudbrightshire produces 

 them in tolerable quantity, and their pearls are of 

 handsome appearance and dimensions. 



Having offered this little information on an in- 

 teresting subject, may I be allowed to call the 

 attention of A. A. and your other correspondents 

 to some points of inquiry arising out of it ? 



1 . Did Suetonius, Tacitus, and the other Latin 

 authors alluded to, when they spoke of British 

 pearls, refer to pearls brought from North Wales 

 and the West of Scotland, where they exist now ? 

 or were there pearls found in the times of the Ro- 

 man invasion on the southern coasts of our island, 

 which were certainly better known to the Romans 

 than the former localities ? 



2. Have our naturalists sufficiently experi- 

 mented on the marine muscles of our south and 

 east coasts to justify the. assumption that they 

 contain no pearls at the present day ? 



3. If the pearl muscles be confined to Conway 

 and the West of Scotland, can naturalists account 

 for the fact of their exclusive powe? of pearl pro- 

 duction either on chemical grounds, or on geolo- 

 gicj^l reasons connected with the strata of the 

 adjoining shores ? Al. H. R. 



Bede in his Ecclesiastical History (Bohn's ed. 

 1847, p. 4.), enumerates amongst many things for 

 which Britain was famous in his day, "many sorts 

 of shell-fisb, such as muscles, in which are often 

 found excellent pearls of all colours, red, purple, 

 violet, and green, but mostly white." W. S. 



HEBBRW LETTERS. 



(2°'* S,. v. 274.) 



There is not only a considerable difference in 

 the printed forms of Hebrew, but also in the 

 manuscript. Every Hebrew Bible with the com- 

 mentary of Rashi shows at least two forms, ana- 

 logous to roman and italic in English printing. 

 But some good tables of ancient Shemitic alpha- 

 bets, from inscriptions, coins, and MSS., must be 

 examined carefully to discriminate the various 

 forms of Hebrew and Samaritan letters, and their 

 relation to the Phoenician, which is the ancestor 

 of all. (Kitto's Bib. Cyc, art. Alphabet.) The 

 best tables for this pxirpose are those of Biittner, 

 appended to Eichhorn's Einleitung in das Alte 

 Testament, vol. i. None of the great authorities 

 among the moderns, Simon, Eichhorn, Lee, Ge^- 

 nius, and Kitto, admit that the Hebrews borrowed 

 their present characters from Babylon as a sub- 

 stitute for the ancient form, which approximated 

 to thepresent Samaritan, as the Talmud {Sanhe- 

 drin, ii.) and Jerome (on Ezechiel ix., and in his 

 Prologus galeatus) seem to infer. Simon con- 

 siders the difference betwixt the present and most 

 ancient forms of Hebrew as not greater than that 

 with which we are already more familiar in Greek 

 and Latin MSS. Eichhorn considers this differ- 

 ence not greater than betwixt the uncial and 

 cursive forms of Greek ; and Lee will only admit 

 that the more ancient Hebrew letters approxi- 

 mated nearer to the Samaritan forms than the 

 modern ones. Eichhorn thinks that the family 

 of Jacob did not use alphabetic characters, their 

 conimercial pursuits not requiring them ; and 

 there is no historical evidence for the contrary 

 supposition. Bearing in mind that Moses had an 

 entirely Egyptian education in Pharaoh's court, 

 and that he was the classic author of his people, 

 we may certainly infer, says Eichhorn, that he 

 used Egyptian letters, such as that nation had in 

 the most remote ages adopted from the Phoeni- 

 cians {Alte Test. i. 138—145.; Caylus, Recueil 

 d'Antiq. Egypt, i. 6-5., v. 77.; Dutens, Medailles 

 Grecques et Pheniciennes) . What little the Jews 

 have to say on this subject is to be found in the 

 Mishneh, Gamara, and Masora, not in the Kab- 

 bala, properly so termed, which consists of an 

 exposition of the Jewish system of philosophy or 

 metaphysics, traces whereof have been detected, 

 as well as of Platonism, by Eichhorn in the apo- 

 cryphal book of Wisdom (Apokr. Schrift, 103.). 

 Those who desire to see what the contents of the 

 Kabbala are, should consult the Kahbala denudata 

 seu Doctrina Hebrceorum transcendentalis, trans- 

 lated by Knorr, a rare book, but of which a copy 

 now appears on sale in Quaritch's Catalogue of 

 the 15th ult., including the third volume. 



T, J. BucKTp:^. 



Lichfield. 



