306 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
of Lower Burma, and in practically all the places heretofore fished by white men. 
The business in the East, excepting the fisheries of Ceylon and the Persian 
Gulf, where the local fisheries and conditions due to the nature of the oysters 
and other local influences are peculiar, is now practically in the hands of Jap- 
anese and Chinese, who alone are satisfied with the small returns from the now 
meager beds. The Europeans formerly engaged in the business are seeking 
other occupations. In Burma most of them have gone into tin mining, and at 
the present time just a single white man is there engaged in the pearl industry. 
In Australia and the islands of the East Indies there is a constant exploration 
now for virgin beds and a seeking for better divers and apparatus to go to greater 
and greater depths. There one hears a constant wail at the limitations of man 
and his apparatus to combat the great pressures of depths where the oysters 
are supposed still to be in abundance, and the more imaginative, speculative, 
or daring are now talking of submarines to go after the oysters. Inthis connection 
I would state that a submarine of special construction has recently been built 
in France for sponge fishing in the Mediterranean off the coast of Algiers. 
As a result of the wastes of past and present methods and the general 
conditions of the industry as now carried on, both in the pearl fisheries of the 
seas as outlined above, and in connection with the fresh-water pearl fisheries 
of the United States and other countries, the statement has been freely made 
in the past few years by prominent pearl dealers of Europe and America that 
no large pearls will ever again come to market, except those in the possession of 
eastern magnates and potentates who may be induced by the extravagant prices 
offered to part with heirlooms held in their families for generations. In other 
words, the pearl of size and value is tending to extinction. Although the 
scientific propagation of oysters and other shellfish has been made a great com- 
mercial industry in Europe and America, the idea of conserving the pearl- 
oyster beds and attacking the problem of securing pearls and shells other than 
by the ruthless destruction of the natural beds seems never to have entered 
the minds of those engaged in the industry. I have never received any encour- 
agement from a single one of them with whom I have corresponded or whom I 
have met; and although the installation which I have myself started has proved 
the undoubted soundness and utility of the process, and the fact of its establish- 
ment has now become more or less known throughout the East, I have yet to 
learn of the interest of any individual or corporation engaged in the pearling 
industry. In view of the recent agitation in the United States because of the 
destruction of the fresh-water mussel pearl fisheries, I hope that in my own 
country more interest will be disclosed. 
PRINCIPLE OF THE PROCESS. 
An electrical engineer by profession, my first knowledge of the: pearling 
industry was gained through an acquaintance with a family having social and 
