204 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 



Bhareen pearLs are credited with being the finest pearls in the world. 



The earliest mention of a j)earl fishery in Ceylon is found in the 

 Rajavali chronicle, 306 B.C., as being near Colombo, and being 

 destroyed by an inundation of the sea. 



Mention of the Ceylon pearl fisheries occurs in Pliny, and of the 

 Tuticorin fisheries m the " Vishnu Purana." 



During the Dutch occupation the best fisheries took place off 

 Chilaw, but there is no actual record of any fisheries during the 

 Portuguese occupation. The Dutch made about £200,000 from 

 their fisheries in 140 years. 



Albyrouni, who lived in the eleventh century, mentions that in 

 his times the Ceylon pearl fisheries suddenly became exhausted. 



I will just quote the final paragraph of a report by Captain Kerk- 

 ham, the Superintendent to the defmict Ce3don Company of Pearl 

 Fishers, who says that it is highly desirable that all the rocky areas 

 north of Colombo should be annually inspected, as it would appear 

 from the immense quantities of oyster shell found in these places 

 that beds of oysters have occurred, matured, and died of old age 

 without even being discovered or fished. 



The question has been raised in recent years as to our claim to the sole 

 right of fishing the Ceylon pearl banks, seemg that they are outside 

 the three-mile limit, but this has been satisfactorily settled, and as a 

 matter of fact the three-mile limit is in itself obsolete, as it referred in 

 the past to that area within the range of the guns then in use in shore 

 batteries , for it may be said what you can defend is yours. Nowadays 

 a fourteen-mile limit would not be excessive with modern artillery. 



In all stages of the pearl oyster wastage is enormous ; when young 

 they crowd together and only the fittest survive, and by the time 

 they become fishable they are scattered about over fairly large 

 areas m bunches of twos and threes. 



By the present methods of fishing it is impossible so to deplete 

 the banks as to leave no oysters for breeding purposes ; quite a 

 quarter of the stock is left on the banks by the divers ; so it is not 

 true, as has been frequently stated, that our blank years are" due 

 to overfishing ; and some other reason must be fomid, and that is, 

 I think, that oysters when spawned on our banks are all carried 

 away by the current and probably lost, whilst we benefit for the 

 same reason from the Tuticorin oyster banks. 



The pearl oysters apparently are continuously present on the 

 Persian Gulf and Somali beds, and fishing is always in progress there. 



That oysters cannot be cultivated on our banks seems pretty 

 certain, as the currents that bring us the Tuticorin spat carry away 

 the local spawn into deep or unsuitable places, where it is lost, and 

 nothing that science can do will ever guarantee annual fisheries or 

 prevent this. 



Our banks are too circumscribed, and the currents too constant, 

 to allow of locally-produced spat setting on the parental oyster beds. 



