River Pearls ; British and Foreign, 247 



account of this discovery, and that he bore a Pearl 

 in his coat of arms : but both these assertions are 

 false, though Professor Fabricius conjectures that 

 the first may be true." What was taken for a 

 Pearl, in the arms of Linnaeus, was really an ^g'g — 

 a symbol of Nature. 



Pearl-mussels are found in considerable numbers 

 in some of the rivers of Saxony and Bohemia. The 

 principal, or perhaps we should rather say, the only 

 Bohemian locality in which the Pearl-fishery has 

 of late years been conducted, is the Horazdiowitz 

 district, in the beautiful valley of the river Wotawa, 

 between Pilsen and Budweis. Much more impor- 

 tant, however, are the fisheries in certain rivers in 

 Saxony. 



The Pearl-fisheries of Saxony are chiefly located 

 in the basin of the White Elster and its tributary 

 streams, in the Saxon Voigtland. The industry, from 

 very ancient times, has been under the control of the 

 State. In 162 1, Duke Johann Georg I., appointed 

 Moritz Schmirler as Conservator of the Crown 

 Pearl-fisheries, and the successive incumbents of the 

 ofBce have been — with only a single exception — 

 direct descendants of Abraham Schmirler, who suc- 

 ceeded his brother Moritz in 1643. We read that 

 in 1649, this Abraham obtained 93 clear Pearls, of 



