ABALONES OF CALIFORNIA EDWAEDS. 433 



at the boiling temperature not only for sterilization, but to give the 

 meat the desired rounded shape. With dipnets the Japanese work- 

 men remove the abalones to baskets and carry them to the drying- 

 frames, where they are laid out in trays in the sunshine. After four 

 or five days, or longer, if the temperature falls, the partly dried 

 abalones are cooked in water for the second time for one hour. Next 

 they are smoked in charcoal smoke for from 12 to 24 hours, and then 

 for the third time placed in boiling water mainly for rinsing. Now 

 they are dried for a period of six weeks and after a final cleansing 

 bath in luke-warm water made ready for shipment. During the 

 process of drying the meat loses nine-tenths of its original weight. 

 ^Vliile hard and tough, like dried beef, it may be sliced with a sharp 

 knife and eaten with relish. AVlien dried the meat brings from 12 to 

 14 cents a pound for the green and corrugated species, and from 8 to 

 10 cents for the black abalone. Most of the dried abalone goes to 

 China and there finally, at retail, brings 75 cents per pound. A camp 

 of 14 Japanese fishermen brings in 30 tons or more of the fresh 

 abalone in a month. There is considerable business in canning 

 abalone for the California markets as well as for New York and 

 Honolulu. The abalone of Japan, the awabi, is a smaller species and 

 the holes of the shell are relatively large, so that only the central 

 part is of value, chiefly for use in inlaying. Gathering abalones is 

 especially carried on by women divers, who swim out to the fishing 

 grounds and work in depths of from 6 to 8 fathoms. Pearls are not 

 often found, but the meat is dried and sold as dark red disks strung 

 on sticks. 



The familiar polished abalone shells have gone all over the world 

 and everywhere are highly esteemed as ornaments. The shell is pol- 

 ished by grinding it first on a carborundum wheel until the desired 

 colors are reached. The shell is then surfaced by a wheel of felt 

 sprinkled with carborundum dust glued to the wheel. Finally it is 

 polished with a wheel made of many layers of cotton on the edges of 

 which tripoli has been rubbed. This wheel is revolved about twenty- 

 two hundred times per minute. The quality of being easy, or hard, 

 to grind and polish is spoken of by the manufactures as the texture 

 of the shell. 



The shells are sorted into two classes, but ordinarily classes 1 and 

 2 are mixed together. At Avalon, in 1870, when the meat sold for 

 5 cents a pound, the green shells brought $80 a ton. At the present 

 time the green shells are sold at $125 to $180 a ton, the black at $80 

 to $100 a ton, and the red at $40 to $75 a ton. The black shells, with 

 especially good pearly centers, bring from $300 to $500 a ton. Owing 

 to the increasing scarcity of good green shells there is a growing 

 tendency to use the centers of the red shells for jewelry. 

 44863°— SM 1913 28 



