266 DIMYARIA.—UNIONID. 
however, seem to have made use of Pennant’s short 
notice of it only, which itself was taken from the 
abridgement, and not from the original. It is 
a remarkable paper, on account of the correctness 
of observation displayed in the personal statements 
of the author, who seems to have been a person 
with considerable natural-history powers. His de- 
scription of both shell and animal is curiously cor- 
rect as far it goes. He states that they were fished 
in the rivers of Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, near Dun- 
dalk, near Waterford, and in Kerry. The poor 
people fished them in the warm months before 
harvest time, when the rivers were low. They 
took them with their hoes, or wooden tongs, or by 
thrusting a stick into the shells which they caught 
sight of among the stones as they lay in part 
opened, with the white foot protruded, ‘like a 
tongue out of the mouth.’ Sir Robert saw them 
lying on their sides, and his informants described 
them as ‘set up in the sand like eggs in salt, with the 
sharp edge downwards, and the opening side turned 
from the torrent.’ One in a hundred might con- 
tain a pearl, and about one in a hundred of the 
pearls was tolerably clear. There were no pearls 
in the young mussels. ‘Some gentlemen of the 
country made good advantage thereof, and I myself 
whilst there saw one pearl bought for fifty shillings 
that weighed thirty-six carats, and was valued at 
forty pounds. Everybody abounds with stories of 
the good pennyworths of the country, but I will 
add one more. A miller took out a pearl which 
he sold for four pounds ten shillings to a man who 
sold it for ten pounds, who sold it to the late Lady 
Glenealy for thirty pounds, with whom I saw it in 
a necklace; she refused eighty pounds for it from 
