94 CONCHOLOGIST’S COMPANION. 
commercial revolutions which the long wars between 
the Christians and Mahomedans occasioned. 
Amalphi and Venice, with Genoa and Portugal, 
successively diffused throughout Europe the costly 
productions of the East. Other nations also gra- 
dually arose upon the commercial platform; and at 
the present period the pearls of India, with its spicery 
and rich perfumes, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, 
muslins, shawls, and chintzes, are widely circulated, 
through the medium of innumerable channels. 
Having thus completed a general survey of the 
various sources of communication through which the 
pearls of India were introduced into Europe, it now 
remains to shew the different places from which they 
are derived, as well as to point out the pearl fisheries 
of ancient times. 
These, to a considerable extent, formerly subsisted 
in the Red Sea, the pearls of which, are supposed by 
Mr. Bruce to have been produced in the shell of a 
species of Pinna. He conjectures that this kind of 
pearl was the penim or peninim of Scripture, and 
that the name is derived from its redness, peninim 
being literally translated by the Greeks, pina, or 
pinna, and the shell pinnicus. This shell abounds in 
many places mentioned by Strabo, Theophrastus, and 
Ptolemy. The same species is noticed by Solomon 
as the most precious of all productions. 
