68 On the Economical Uses of some species of Testacen. 



II. Mya margaritifera, (Linn.)— TAe Horse Muscle. 



Next to the last species, this shell is the most celebrated for its 

 pearls, and which in old times not unfrequently came into competi- 

 tion with those from India. Julius Csesar is said to have been stim- 

 ulated to the invasion of Britain by the sight of the pearls brought 

 from it;* and he certainly on his return to Rome presented a breast- 

 plate made of them to the Temple of Venus Genetrix.f They 

 appear to have been at that time, A. D. 14, an object of commerce 

 to Gaul, if not further south .;]: Forty years later they were com- 

 mon in Rome. Pliny informs us they were used in his time, and 

 though of inferior worth, were often so large and beautiful as to be 

 of considerable value. In general, however, they were small, dim, 

 and wanting in lustre. 



About the year 1120, the Scotch pearls were in great request. 

 King Alexander I. is said to have exceeded all men in that species 

 of riches, and his pearls, on account of their large size and superior 

 brightness were celebrated and coveted in distant countries. *§> In 

 1355, they were still an article of exportation. They were esteem- 

 ed in France, but not equally with those of India, as appears by the 

 MS. statutes of the Goldsmiths' Company at Paris, where it is 

 ordained that no worker in gold or silver shall set any Scottish pearls 

 among the oriental ones, except in large jewelry for churches, || for 

 which, probably, a sufficient quantity of the oriental pearls could not 

 be obtained, or v/ere too expensive. 



Among the articles exported to Antwerp from Scotland in 1560, 

 and enumerated by Gulcciardin, we find "fine large pearls" men- 

 tioned. H In 1665, they were still sought for and worn in England, 

 and a writer in the Philosophical Transactions of London at that 

 time, makes mention of one found in Ireland which weighed fifty six 

 carats, and was valued at £40, and of another for which £80 had 

 been refused, besides " a vast number of fair, merchantable pearls, 

 too good for the apothecary," offered for sale by persons from the 

 same place.** About 1760, the wearing of real pearls coming more 

 into fashion, those of Scotland, which had previously been almost 



* Sueton. Vit. Jul. Caes. cap. Ixiv. 



t Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ix. 35. i Macpherson, I, 133. 



§ Macpiierson, I, 318. II Ibid, I. 555, 



•tr Macpherson, II. 131. 



** Phil. Trans, of the Royal Society, II. 831. 



