286 PEARLS AND PEAEL-CULTURE. 



artificial beds like the edible oysters, and yield a large 

 revenue." He has ascertained, by his experiments in 

 Ceylon, that the pearl-oysters are more tenacious of life 

 than any other bivalve with which he is acquainted, 

 and that they can live in brackish water and in places 

 so shallow that they must be exposed for two or three 

 hours daily to the sun and air. 



Captain Phipps, superintendent of the Tinnevelly 

 pearl-banks, convinced that artificial nurseries for the 

 young oysters are the only means to insure a remuner- 

 ative fishery, has succeeded in getting these established 

 on a bank in the harbour of Tuticorin. 



In compliance with custom we have spoken of the 

 pearl-oyster, but the animal is really a mussel, having, 

 like it. a byssus or cable by which it secures itself to the 

 rocks. Dr Kelaart's researches in Ceylon have proved 

 that it possesses the power of casting off its byssus at 

 pleasure. We trust that this only recently-ascertained 

 fact will attract the attention of the Acclimatisation 

 Societies in London and Paris, and induce them to re- 

 move the pearl-oyster from its native beds and locate it 

 in the seas of Europe. 



At all events, now that the former of these societies 

 has accepted a gift of fresh- water mussels from the Tay, 

 with the design of introducing them into an English 

 river, we hope that something will be done to encour- 

 age the transportation of the mussel (Unio margaritifera) 

 to the many rivers and lakes suitable to their production. 

 The mussels of the Tay and the Don in Scotland, of the 

 Conway and the Irt in England, and of several rivers in 

 the North of Ireland, have long been known to yield 

 pearls, often of great value. But the natural history of 

 the animal has been little studied ; its ability to bear 

 transportation to a distance, the means of rendering it 

 prolific, and of developing its pearl-producing powers 

 by placing it in favourable localities, or by such arti- 

 ficial processes as we have indicated all these are 

 points about which little is known, but as to which we 



