PEARLS AND PEARL-OYSTERS. 211 



decaying shellfish reign supreme. Little cause for marvel that amid these surroundings 

 long residence there without change generates a most decided tendency towards the 

 development of hepatic and splenetic disorders. 



The view given in the upper illustration of the Plate just quoted embodies 

 everything that is essential in the equipment of a Shark's Bay Pearling Station. 

 Pearling cutters anchored in the Bay. Heaps of shell brought in by the boats and 

 awaiting attention at the hands of the native boys and "belles" who are extensively 

 engaged here to perform the savoury task of detaching the half-putrid gem-bearing 

 fish from their shelly tenements. To the left, on the beach, may be seen a 

 number of barrels set upright, into which are consigned the abstracted shellfish, of 

 which more anon. A half-windlass, half-barrel-organ sort of apparatus in the mid- 

 ground is the happy inspiration of a local genius for the reception and rapid revolution 

 of the roughly-cleaned shells, whereby all the brittle outer and useless margins are 

 rubbed off and fall through the coarse wire-netting framework to the ground 

 beneath. In the yet more immediate foreground the cleaned and bagged -up 

 shells are ready for dispatch to the London market. The lower of the two 

 pictures gives a nearer view of the same station from a different standpoint, in 

 which the shell supplies and much of the paraphernalia above described are still 

 more clearly defined. 



The pearls yielded by the Shark's Bay shell are of a somewhat unique character. 

 While a large portion of them are of the ordinary milk-white or opalescent tint, 

 a not inconsiderable percentage are a brilliant straw or golden hue. "Golden 

 Pearls " from the " Golden West " represent a happy and altogether appropriate 

 conjunction. Although not ranking at present in the trade so high as their colourless 

 compeers, there can be -no doubt that, from an aesthetic standpoint, these golden 

 pearls possess a richness and warmth of tint that, to many minds, is incomparably finer. 

 In the upper half of Plate XXXVIII., a photographic representation is given of 

 the separated valves of a Shark's Bay shell, and in the hollow of the one to the left 

 a small series of these golden pearls were temporarily deposited. Both the shell and 

 pearls are in this instance represented at about three-quarters of their natural size. A yet 

 finer series of this particular description of pearls derived from Shark's Bay has been 

 recently placed on view among the writer's loan collection to the Western Australian 

 Court of the Imperial Institute. 



The modus operandi of abstracting the pearls from the animal substance of the 

 Shark's Bay shells differs in a marked direction from that practised with relation to 



