PEARLS AND PEARL-OYSTERS. 203 



pearl-shells and other indigenous products lent by the writer to the Western 

 Australian Court of the Imperial Institute, those specially interested in such lusi 

 naturae are afforded an opportunity of examining and deciding for themselves as to 

 the most manifest resemblances of this infant prodigy. 



Included in the collection above referred to are several pearls of fantastic shape, 

 some of them, notably, resembling the bodies of spiders and various insects. One of 

 these practically double pearls is photographically reproduced to a scale of a little 

 less than one half of its natural size in the lower figure on page 202, which represents 

 it as it was originally exposed to view, embedded in the living tissues of the pearl- 

 oyster. This specimen is the more interesting since it likewise reveals the presence 

 of one of the little commensal Pea-crabs, Pinnotheres, already referred to as not 

 unfrequently occurring in this bivalve. Another little crustacean " commensal " so- 

 called to distinguish it from a predaceous parasite, it being dependent upon its host 

 only for comfortable lodgings takes the form of a tiny lobster of a transparent hue, 

 sprinkled with red. This species, which is known to science by the title of Alphem 

 avarits, is more plentifully met with in the Mother-of-Pearl shells on the Queensland 

 coast and is figured in Plate XIV. of the writer's book descriptive of the fish and 

 fisheries of the Great Barrier Reef. 



As attested to on a previous page, not many years since Pearl-shelling on the 

 Western Australian coast, having commenced in the year 1868 shell was to be 

 obtained in quantities by simply wading and gathering it from the inshore reefs. 

 These were the happy times when the Pearl-sheller could rapidly make his pile, 

 effecting a grand coup perhaps in a single day by the purchase of a pickle bottle 

 full of pearls from the unsophisticated natives for no more substantial a consideration 

 than a pound of bad tobacco. Times have changed since then, the former inshore 

 reefs have been stripped clean, and it is with much toil, trouble and a frequent loss 

 of human life that profitable returns are filched from the deeper water from which the 

 shell is now alone to be obtained in abundance. 



Within a measurable distance of time it will probably come about that the 

 banks at present workable will become exhausted, and the goose with its golden eggs, 

 like the oyster industry in some of the South Australian colonies, will be well-nigh, if 

 not absolutely, done to death. The one remedial measure for this untoward condition 

 of affairs is undoubtedly that of artificial cultivation. This expedient may not perhaps 

 recommend itself to the generality of the reapers of to-day, to whom the outlook for 

 the harvesters of the morrow is a matter of supreme indifference. The waste involved 



