224 TURNING THE HALIOTIS TO PRIESTLY SERVICE. 



animals must be collected, but there is no telling how many individuals 

 this represents. After being cured, abalone meat is worth from five to 

 ten cents a pound, and the value of the crop which reaches San Francisco 

 annually approaches $40,000, distributed among some hundreds of men. 

 The coast is now so stripped of the haliotis that the Chinese fishermen 

 are compelled to resort to unfrequented islands, transportation to whicli 

 is afforded, them by Americans, who take their pay in shells, while the 

 Chinese retain the meat. 



The trade in abalone-shells, indeed, is of twice as much importance, 

 financially, as that in the flesh, since it amounts to nearly $90,000 a year. 

 Some Americans also are engaged in this business, and the finishing off 

 of the shells for market is wholly in their hands. 



The shell of the haliotis is one of the most brilliantly beautiful in 

 its interior of any known. The lustrous, iridescent curves of the nacre, 

 reflecting ever-varying and prismatic colors in endless profusion, delight 

 every eye. In aged specimens the part to which the adductor muscle is 

 attached is raised above the level of the rest of the interior, and presents 

 a roughened or carved surface of irregular shape, often fancifully imita- 

 tive of some other object. The writer has seen one which thus contained 

 a singularly correct profile or medallion of Napoleon I. 



Eastern ingenuity, combined with the close observation which in some 

 directions make the Chinese and Japanese eminent, has cleverly ntilized 

 the extraordinary power of secreting nacre possessed by this mollusk. 

 It was observed that whenever a grain of sand or any other small foreign 

 substance worked its way between the shell and the mantle, the mollusk 

 would speedily cover it with a pearly coat. This is the origin of pearls ; 

 and all bivalves do the same thing, but few are so large or supply the 

 pearl so copiously as does our subject. 



It occurred to the ingenious Chinaman that if he were to slip small 

 figures of his own making underneath the abalone's armor, he could 

 presently take them away beautifully empearled. This has often been 

 done in the past and present; and priests have advanced their doctrines 

 in the faith of simple peasants by producing in this way (which they did 

 not explain) pearl images of Buddha and other saints, and selling the 

 same at a high price — advertising them as Nature's signets, miraculously 

 impressed in divine attestation of the truth of their creed. 



Outside, the shells are usually rough and unattractive, except to the 

 marine zoologist, who finds them supporting a small forest of minute 

 vegetable and animal forms, and harboring microscopic life of great 

 interest. A curious case of a larger parasite is mentioned by Mr. Stearns, 



