Distribution of Pearls and Pearl-shell, 105 
with the pearly nacre, and the mussels are taken out of 
the water, and the “pearls” detached by a sharp knife. 
The matrices used vary in form and substance, the most 
common being pellets of mud. Another class consists of 
small images, especially of Buddha, in the usual sitting 
position, or sometimes of a fish; they are made of lead, 
cast very thin. The invention of the art is attributed to 
a native of the place, named Ye-jin-yang, to whom a 
temple has been erected, in which divine honours are paid 
to his image. He is said to have lived about A.D. 1200— 
1300. The topography of Chihkiang mentions a pearl 
sent to Court in 490 A.D., which resembled Buddha, being 
three inches in size. The resemblance, however, may have 
been fanciful ; the “pearls” now made are but half-an-inch 
long. 
Other writers have given similar accounts of this 
curicus industry, but the most remarkable is that related 
by Mary Roberts in her little book on the “ Popular 
History of the Mollusca” (1851, pp. 275-6). She tells 
us that in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks were 
“several Chinese Chamee [? Uuzo], in the shells of which 
were contained bits of iron wire, covered with a substance 
of a pearly nature. These wires had evidently once been 
sharp, and it seemed as if the mollusks, anxious to secure 
themselves against the intrusion of such unwelcome 
visitors, had encrusted, and thus rendered blunt, the 
points with which they came in contact.” She concludes 
by remarking : “may not, therefore, the process employed 
in past ages be still practised? And are we not authorized 
in conjecturing that these bits of iron, which probably 
had slipped from the hands of the Chinese workmen, and 
remained in the animal, resembled the spikes noticed by 
Philostratus as being used by the ancient people who 
inhabited the banks of the Red Sea, for the purpose of 
