Pearls and the Pearl Fisheries* 421 



oysters. The necks of the females were adorned with 

 strings of pearls, which they were induced to exchange for 

 the more attractive novelties of fragments of porcelain ware 

 painted and adorned with gaudy colours. The natives 

 entertain the old fanciful notion which the earlier natu- 

 ralists did : they suppose the pearls formed from petrified 

 dewdrops in connection with sunbeams. We can, there- 

 fore, well credit the astonishment of Columbus and his 

 mariners when, in the Gulf of Paria, they first found oysters 

 (Dendrostrea, Swai.) clinging to the branches of trees, their 

 shells gaping open, ready, as was supposed, to receive the 

 dew, which was afterwards to be transformed to pearls. 



The Hindoos poetically ascribe their production to drops 

 of dew, which fall into the shells of the fish in which they 

 are formed. A Brahmin told Mr. Le Beck that the mollusc 

 rises to the surface of the sea in the month of May, to 

 catch the drops in his shell, and that he thus received the 

 germ of a pearl, which is then impregnated by the heat of 

 the sun. 



Pliny had probably some version of this Indian idea, 

 and, as usual, he improved the story by the addition of 

 something of his own. He says : " The pearls vary accord- 

 ing to quality of the dew of which they are formed ; if that 

 be clear, they are also clear ; if turbid, they are turbid ; if 

 the weather be cloudy when the precious drop is received 

 into the shell, the pearl will be pale-coloured ; if the shell 

 has received a good supply, the pearl will be large ; but 

 lightning may cause it to close too suddenly, and then the 

 pearl will be very small ; when it thunders during the 

 reception of the drop, the pearl thence resulting will be a 

 mere hollow shell of no consistency." 



In 1871 the Government of Guayaquil granted per- 

 mission to the owner of an American schooner to dive for 



