PHOTOTYPE PLATE NO. XXXJ'III. 59 



projecting calcareous lamina? such as give rise to the long spines of what are known as the Thorny 

 Clams, genus Spondylus, which flourish in the same seas. As the pearl shell grows older, the 

 edges of these laminae become relatively shorter; and finally they disappear, becoming apparently 

 eroded during the growth of the shell substance. This shell represents an individual about twelve 

 months old, and in that period of its existence when it is securely anchored to coral-rock or some 

 other solid fulcrum by a fibrous byssus. Some few of the threads constituting this byssus are left 

 projecting from the intra\-alvnlar aperture on the upper right-hand corner of the shell. The 

 colour of the shell in this earlier (or what is commercially known as the "chicken") stage of 

 growth is much brighter than in the older stages. In the specimen here figured, shades of pale 

 green and fawn are attractively blended, the former colour predominating, more particularly, in the 

 neighbourhood of the initial growth centres or umbones. 



The upper figure in Plate XXXVIII. will possibly attract notice as representing one of the 

 earliest attempts, associated with some degree of success, to produce a pearl by an operation on 

 the living animal of the marine mother-of-pearl shell. The results attained ages past by the 

 Chinese, by a special treatment of the fresh-water pearl mussel, Dipsas plicatiis, are probably 

 familiar to every reader The ingenious Celestials, by inserting little leaden images of Buddha, 

 and other subjects, beneath the living membranes of that shell-fish, induced it to invest them 

 with a pearly pellicle. Closely parallel results would probably have been achieved by the same 

 industrious people in connection with the marine species, had they possessed the material to work 

 upon. As shown, however, in the chapter dealing with the pearl and pearl-shell fisheries, 

 considerable difficulty is associated with the initial cultivation of the marine species, with the 

 object of subsequent experimental operations. As in the opening paragraph of Mrs. Glass' 

 classic essay on the art of jugging hare, the difficulty begins with the catching of the hare. 

 Setting aside, for description on a future page, the methods found most efficacious by the author 

 for transporting and cultivating the shell, it may be stated that the pearl represented in the 

 accompanying illustration differs materially from the Chinese productions, in the respect that it is 

 solid pearl throughout, and not a metal or analogous nacre-coated object. It is a true hemispherical 

 pearl capable of excision, from the parent matrix ; after the manner of what are known as 

 " bouton " pearls, and it possesses a symmetry and lustre that invest it, by the dictum of 

 experts, with a substantial intrinsic value. As an artificially-produced pearl, it represents a 

 half-way stage towards the production of even more favourable results in the form of freely- 

 detached pearls of equally perfect lustre and irreproachable contour. It has been deemed 

 scarcely fair to speculating schemers, amid these circumstances, to tantalise and disturb 

 their minds with hazy glimpses of a royal road to the rapid accumulation of untold wealth, 

 by a detailed account of the tedious steps that lead to the goal thus far approached. 

 Towards the registration of subscribers to a possible new edition of this book, the 



publishers may be in a position to hold out the glittering bait— of "a revelation of the 



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