PROCESS FOR PRESERVING PEARL-OYSTER FISHERIES. 307 
business relations with Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica, who thereby had a 
knowledge of and who dealt in pearls fished in the waters of those countries. It 
was because of this acquaintance and the knowledge thus gained of the conditions 
that I conceived the idea of utilizing the X ray for preventing the losses and 
wastes of present pearling methods and for increasing the yield of fine pearls. 
In this connection, I would state that I am not the first to have thought of 
utilizing the X ray for these purposes. Although I did not know it until later, 
Prof. Raphael Dubois, of the University of Lyons, had a few years before sug- 
gested such a use of the X ray. I had the pleasure, in the month of December, 
1907, of paying a visit to Professor Dubois. But from a particular question asked 
by him I found that his investigations had been slight and not very extensive 
on living oysters. 
The question asked by Professor Dubois was one which I had great difficulty 
in explaining away to the laymen whom I induced to become financially inter- 
ested in my enterprise, “‘ Will the X rays kill the oysters?” I had made this 
test at the very commencement of my experiments, once I had become enabled 
by skillful exposure to disclose pearls which I had placed inside of large Rockaway 
oysters in New York. Having previously made arrangements at the New 
York Aquarium, I placed in tanks there live oysters which I had subjected to 
continuous exposure of powerful X rays for as long as a period of ten minutes. 
These oysters lived for months without showing any ill effects whatever. In 
my process the time of exposure is not one-tenth of this. I made this experiment 
only in order to satisfy the minds of my subscribers, for, after consultation with 
specialists having a full knowledge of the physiological and pathological effects 
of X rays on animal tissues and organisms, I was myself convinced that the 
slight exposure necessary for the process could have no effect. 
My first intention and experiments were with the idea of using the fluoro- 
scope for the detection of the pearls within the living oysters, but having 
learned that in Ceylon they had taken as many as 41,000,000 oysters at a single 
fishery (one season) I saw that the conditions were not as in Costa Rica and some 
other places. I accordingly adopted a radiographic method. A comparatively 
few oysters may be examined individually and carefully by means of the fluoro- 
scope, but by the other method great numbers may be automatically handled 
and many inspectors may leisurely examine radiographs made practically 
automatically; and the radiographic method in practice has done all I expected 
ittodo. In the same time that would be required to examine a single oyster by 
the fluoroscopic method a single tube and operator can make radiographic 
images of hundreds of oysters, and, as has been found in surgical work, a radio- 
graph will show up more minute particles and detail than can ever be disclosed 
by a fluoroscopic examination. 
In order to accomplish the object sought, [had to devise a process and appa- 
ratus, and I subjoin hereto a description and the claims of the first of several 
