176 LECTURE XI. 



pair of her ear-rings : the fellow to it is said to 

 have been sent to Rome, and after being properly 

 cut in two, formed a pair of pendants for the ears 

 of a celebrated statue of Venus in that city. It 

 may not be improper to observe, that the ele- 

 gant manufacture of what are called false or arti- 

 ficial pearls, which sometimes so nearly equal true 

 ones in beauty as to be very difficultly distin- 

 guished from them, is originally a French inven- 

 tion, and is still carried on in its greatest perfec- 

 tion at Paris. The thin glass bubbles used for 

 i 



this purpose have their inside lined by a pearl- 

 coloured substance thrown into them through a 

 small tube ; the pearl-coloured substance is pre- 

 pared by well beating the silvery scales of fishes, 

 and particularly of bleaks, in water, which being 

 poured away, the silvery sediment undergoes seve- 

 ral other ablutions, and being then mixed with pro- 

 per agglutinating ingredients, is used in the manner 

 just described. The inventor is said to have been 

 a Bead-maker of the name of Jacquin, and to have 

 lived about the time of Henry the Fourth. This 

 man observed, that on washing the scales of the 

 Bleak, a most beautiful silver-coloured powder was 

 obtained ; and it occurred to him that by intro- 



