352 CURIOUS ORIGIN OF PEARLS. 



appellee caire, qui entoure son fruit, et qu' on le charge 

 ensuite avec ses Cocos ;" but, perhaps, all the world does 

 not know that the Gomuti Palin is nearly as valuable. 



The people of Sooloo appear to be very fond of amassing 

 pearls and bezoar stones, and there is scarcely a man of 

 any pretensions among them, who will not, after having 

 been in your society a short while, produce mysteriously 

 from the folds of his sarong, two or more of these precious 

 concretions. The pearls are of different sizes and very 

 various in colour. Those from the Pinna, are black and 

 red ; from the Tridacna gigas, dull opaque white ; from 

 the Placuna placenta, of a lead-colour ; from the true 

 Pearl-Oyster (Meleagrina margaritifera), they are fre- 

 quently of a light semi-transparent straw-colour. 



Dalrymple, in his account of the pearl-fishery of Sooloo, 

 gives an amusing statement regarding the Pinnotheres 

 which inhabit the pearl-shells. He terms them small 

 lobsters, and says there are two in each shell ; that their 

 beautiful transparent bodies have red spots, the female 

 white ; and that the latter has, under the tail and belly, 

 many eggs, which appeared under the microscope to be 

 " Teepye " shells (Pearl-Oysters). " There is from hence 

 room," he adds, " to conjecture that shell-fish, in general, 

 are generated by such lobsters; for the several species 

 common in the Sooloo Seas, as Manangcy, Teepye, Bato, 

 Capees, Beelong, Bineong, Seedap, &c., &c., I have been 

 assured always have two lobsters, though every species of 

 shell-fish has a distinct species of the lobster." To con- 

 firm his hypothesis, by an appeal to the philosophical 

 judgment of the natives, he adds " It was obvious to all 

 the Sooloos, who saw the egg of the Teepye lobster, that 



