PEARL FISHERY. 205 



one in a hundred be tolerably clean, yet a vast 

 number of fair merchantable pearls, and too good 

 for the apothecary, are offered to sale by those peo- 

 ple every summer assize. Some gentlemen of the 

 country make good advantage thereof; and myself, 

 while there, saw one pearl, bought for fifty shillings, 

 that weighed thirty-six carats, and was valued at forty 

 pounds; and had it been as clean as some others 

 produced therewith, would certainly have been very 

 valuable. A miller took out a pearl which he sold 

 for four pounds ten shillings to a man that sold it for 

 ten pounds, who sold it to the late Lady Glenarty for 

 thirty pounds, with whom I saw it in a necklace. She 

 refused eighty pounds for it from the Duchess of 

 Ormond. 



" That part where the pearl lieth is in the toe or 

 lesser end at the extremity of the gut, and out of the 

 body of the fish, between the two films or skins that 

 line the shell. 



" I believe that this pearl answereth to the stone in 

 other animals, and certainly like that increaseth by 

 several crusts growing over one another, which 

 appeareth by pinching the pearl in a vice, and the 

 upper coat will crack and leap away : and this stone 

 is cast off by the mussel and voided as it is able, and 

 many shells that have had pearls in them are found 

 now to have none ; by these instances the shells that 

 have the best pearls are wrinkled, twisted, or bunched, 

 and not smooth and equal as those that have none, 

 as you may observe by one of the shells herewith 

 sent, of a lighter colour than the rest : this shell 

 yielded a pearl sold for twelve pounds. And the crafty 



