THE TOMB OF PEARL 



The rarity and the lack of resemblance indicate that 

 here we have an accidental case, and we are curious 

 to know what it means. 



I take up one of the shells. With the point of a 

 scalpel, I break off in little pieces the surface of the 

 pearly band. This, made of very thin layers, breaks up 

 into small flakes, and I soon discover that it forms a sort 

 of shell, enwrapping something, upon which it applies 

 itself and models itself exactly. Patiently and care- 

 fully, for it is fragile, I uncover the object thus sur- 

 rounded, and I find that it is a small fish, dead, of 

 course, and petrified, with a longish body, caught in 

 the mother-of-pearl and so preserved. I can discern 

 its head, the eyes sunken in their orbits, the snout 

 through which the bones protrude, and I can also see 

 the fins, all the rays of which are preserved, and the 

 whole body, in which the vertebrae may be seen 

 one behind the other. This object is the mummy 

 of a fish, preserving its normal form. The thick 

 band which protrudes in the inside of the shell is a 

 tomb of mother-of-pearl in which the mummy is 

 buried. 



It is not difficult to reconstruct the phases of the 

 extraordinary event which has turned this oyster shell 

 into a sort of mausoleum, wherein is a tomb in which 

 a corpse is buried. This corpse was first impregnated 

 with calcareous matter, as we may easily see if we 

 treat it with weak acid. Thus embalmed, it was 

 covered with one layer of mother-of-pearl after another, 

 until it was completely surrounded. Nature had built 

 for it a tomb of rare and precious stone, a magni- 

 ficent coffin; she had done for this little fish what 

 the Egyptians used to do for the remains of their 

 kings. 



This shell, in which the tomb is placed, once 



belonged to a pearl oyster. When it was alive, it 



had the structure of its fellows. Its body was sheltered 



in the large shell with two thick valves, and it con- 



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