PEA.BL PRODUCTION. 



39 



South Indian pearl merchants make constant use, in working out their valuations, of 

 a useful Pearl Merchants' "Ready Reckoner," published in 1890 at Tondimundalam, 

 Madras, under the name of " Pearl -calculating Tables." It is printed wholly in 

 Tamil, and gives the number of chevoe for a certain weight in Kalanchu and Manchadi 

 of special classes of pearl. That obtained, the valuers fix the estimate according to what 

 they agree shall be considered the market price of the day per chevoe of this quality. 

 It may be accepted that this figure given in the official valuation is always considerably 

 under the true ruling price of the day, and at the auctions during the fishery that 

 follows, the oysters always sell at far above the estimate given in this valuation. 



It is possible that with the advent of the London syndicate, to which the Ceylon 

 pearl fisheries have been leased for the next twenty years, these picturesque old-time 

 native methods, which have survived through the Portuguese, Dutch and British 

 administrations, may now give place to more exact modern financial requirements. 

 We are glad to have had this opportunity of putting on record a system which, 

 existing, it is said, at the time of the " Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," has come 

 down to our own day, practically unaffected by European civilisation, and may before 

 long be doomed to disappear. 



Pearl merchants. From a photograph by J. HORN ELL. 



