THE CULT OF SHELLS 67 



that a theory connecting them with dewdrops is 

 geographically very widespread. From head- 

 quarters on the shores of the Red Sea, where 

 fisheries were established long before the time 

 of the Ptolemies, the appreciation of pearls spread 

 far and wide, in the New World as well as in the 

 Old. It is well known that pearls took pre- 

 cedence over all other gems among the Romans 

 and " according to Suetonius, the great motive of 

 Caesar's expedition into Britain in 55 B.C. was to 

 obtain its pearls, which were so large that he used 

 to try the weight of them by his hand." These 

 were, of course, the productions of freshwater 

 mussels. The modern zoologist knows that pearls 

 are produced by the reaction of the mollusk's skin 

 to some minute focus of irritation, which may be 

 the microscopic larva of a tapeworm or fluke, or 

 a blob of conchin (the organic foundation of the 

 shell), or even an inorganic particle. This was, of 

 course, unknown to the ancients, but it is interest- 

 ing to find from remote antiquity the outcrop of 

 various recipes for the artificial stimulation of 

 pearl-production within the mollusk. With a 

 different smack are the old tales that if pearls are 

 sealed up for a time in a box along with a little rice 

 they wijl be found to have multiplied. The 

 originals will not be any the worse; only the ends 

 of the rice-grains will show an appearance of having 

 been nibbled at. Given beautiful, mysterious, 

 costly things like pearls, we have no difficulty in 

 understanding the halo of secondary virtues. Burnt 



