UNIO. 151 



and in Kerry. The poor people fished them in the warm 

 months before harvest-time, when the rivers were low. 

 They took them with their toes, or wooden tongs, or by 

 thrusting a stick into the shells which they caught sight of 

 among the stones as they lay in part opened, with the white 

 foot protruded "like a tongue out of the mouth. 11 Sir 

 Robert saw them lying on their sides, and his informants 

 described them as " set up in the sand like eggs in salt, 

 with the sharp edge downwards, and the opening side turn- 

 ed from the torrent." One in a hundred might contain a 

 pearl, and of about one in a hundred of the pearls was tole- 

 rably clear. There were no pearls in the young mussels. 

 " Some gentlemen of the country made good advantage 

 thereof, and I myself whilst there saw one pearl bought 

 for fifty shillings that weighed thirty-six carats, and was 

 valued at forty pounds. Everybody abounds with stories 

 of the good pennyworths of the country, but I will add one 

 more. A miller took out a pearl which he sold for four 

 pounds ten shillings, to a man who sold it for ten pounds, 

 who sold it to the late Lady Glenealy for thirty pounds, with 

 whom I saw it in a necklace ; she refused eighty pounds for 

 it from the late Duchess of Ormond." " The pearl, 1 ' Sir 

 Robert observes, " lies in the toe, or lesser end, at the ex- 

 tremity of the gut, and out of the body of the fish, between 

 the two films or skins that line the shell. 11 He remarks 

 that they correspond with calculi in other animals. 



The pearls of the Conway had great fame. According to 

 Pennant a notion prevails in Wales, " that Sir Richard 

 Wynne of Gwydir, chamberlain to Catherine, Queen to 

 Charles the Second, presented her majesty with a pearl 

 from the Conway which is to this day honoured with a 

 place in the regal crown. 11 He says the Pearl Mussels are 

 called by the Welsh Cregin dilute, or Deluge Shells, as if 



