FRESHWATER MUSSELS. 265 
although they were ostentatiously offered to the 
goddess of beauty; for Pliny, who narrates the 
circumstance, states at the same time that the pearls 
from Britain were small and lustreless, and not to 
be compared with those from the East. Tacitus, 
in his Life of Agricola, describes the pearls of Bri- 
tain as ‘ subfusca ac liventia ;) and among ancient 
Christian writers they are mentioned by Origen 
and Bede. Pennant, and other writers, who have 
treated of pearls, have all taken it for granted that 
those mentioned by the ancient authors quoted 
were derived from the Unio. This, however, is by 
no means clear, and Cesar’s buckler was more pro- 
bably covered with pearls from Mytilus edulis, very 
much inferior in quality and size to those from the 
fresh-water Pearl Mussel, and agreeing better with 
the disparaging account of them in Pliny. Those 
mentioned by Camden, as occurring at the mouth 
of the Irt, in Cumberland, seem to have been of 
the same nature. ‘he pearl-fishery at the mouth 
of the Conway [to which I have already referred] 
also concerns the Mytilus and not the Unio. Higher 
up the latter river, however, and in many rivers of 
all parts of the kingdom, especially in the neigh- 
bourhood of mountainous districts, the Unio has 
been at various times fished to a great extent for 
pearls, and, in all probability, the fame of British 
pearls that attracted the Roman conqueror was due 
to the products of the shell before us. The best 
account of these fisheries of the freshwater Pearl 
Mussel is contained in a curious paper in the seven- 
teenth volume of the ‘ Philosophical Transactions,’ 
(1693,) written by Sir Robert Redding, and com- 
municated by Dr. Martin Lister. This paper has 
been often referred to by subsequent writers, who, 
