LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 29 



Linnean secret whicli he ho,d purchased, and how his father could 

 not find the docnuients, which were supposed for a time to be lost, 

 and how he himself eventually found them when ruinaging amongst 

 a mass of family papers in search of a missing account. This 

 was at a time when he was leaving Sweden for England, and 

 his subsequent attempts to get the Swedish Government to buy 

 his rights and to promote pearl-formation as an industry were 

 apparently unsuccessful. 



Since then nothing, I believe, has been done with the " secret," 

 although various investigators and operators in different parts of 

 the world, including Mr. Hornell and myst-lf, have tried more or 

 less similar methods of stimulating molluscs to pearl-production — 

 with but indifferent results. But I am by no means certain that 

 artificial margarosis, either by these or some other methods, mav 

 not some day become a commercial success. 



Linnaeus says : '' As all the knacks of Nature are very simple, so 

 is this when properly hit upon " ; and there was certainly no 

 great complication about his process. We are now able by means 

 of these two manuscript books in our librar}' to make our the 

 details of the " secret process." By fitting the extracts labelled 

 A. to H. in the one set of papers into ihe lettered gaps in the 

 proceedings of the Secret Committee of 1761 in the other volume, 

 we have the completed description in Linujeus's own words. 



Thn essential points made by Linuceus seem to be: — (I) that in 

 the formation of a pearl there is always some foreign matter 

 (" peregrinum ") which is slowly covered by successive lamellae of 

 cale ireous matter deposited by the mollusc ; (2) that to induce 

 pearl-formation when and where you wisli, you must make a very 

 small hole in the shell and insert a little round fragment of lime- 

 stone fixed on the end of a fine silver wire ; (3) that you must 

 keep these artificial nuclei near the ends of tlie shell, so as not to 

 interfere unduly with the animal's body ; and (4) that the nuclei 

 must, by means of tlie silver wire, be kept free from the shell so that 

 the resulting pearls may not become adherent to it by a deposit 

 of nacre. 



That is all. It is certainly, as its author says, " very simple . , . 

 when properly hit upon." Simpler even than the ''knack of IS^ature,'' 

 requiring a parasitic worm and several successive hosts, that we 

 now believe is necessary to produce the finest pearls. And yet 

 Linn;eus seems to have obtained by the process certain pearls 

 which the crown-jeweller declared to be in every way as good as 

 those produced naturally. Probably they w ere compared not with 

 the most precious pearls from the pearl-oysters of Eastern seas, 

 but with those of the Swedish fresh-water mussels {Unio mar- 

 garitifera). 



Our General Secretary has kindly helped me to find in the 

 Linnean Collections the original shells and pearls made use of by 

 Linnaeus in his secret process, evidently the specimens which 

 J. P. Bagge was anxious to get from Sir J. E. Smith. These 

 Linnean specimens are now exhibited on the table. 



