206 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
to the bases of the isolated larger trees, and form a thick carpet on the farther side 
of the water in the illustration quoted. 
Although it was thus proved that the large Mother-of-Pearl shell would live 
and even multiply amid such apparently uncongenial surroundings as a mangrove 
swamp, it is not suggested that such locations should be selected in preference to 
their natural reefs for cultivation purposes. When, however, it happens, as at Broome, 
that there are no contiguous suitable reef areas, mangrove ground, having a firm shell 
and gravel bottom, is capable of being turned to substantial practical account. 
Such areas can be utilised not only as convenient or necessary store ponds for the 
temporary accumulation of supplies of shell to be subsequently transported to more 
remote cultivation beds, but also for the conduct of operations and experiments 
bearing upon the growth and even possible artificial production of pearls. The 
question, at all events, of the feasibility of cultivating the large species of Mother-of- 
Pearl. under the most varying conditions within its indigenous tropical area of 
distribution was now fully solved, and the steps next initiated were with the view 
of ascertaining to what, if any, extent such cultivation might be practical outside these 
limits. An oyster whose shells have a market value of from £100 to £200 per ton, 
and a matured individual pair of which may weigh as much as ten, twelve, or even 
fourteen pounds, is, from a commercial standpoint, far too valuable an asset among 
Nature’s products to be abandoned to ruthless decimation, if not ultimate extinction, 
at the hands of reckless and irresponsible fishermen. 
There is no reason, indeed, why the bulk of the easily accessible, and consequently 
denuded, shallow water coral reefs, from which the shell was originally gathered, should 
not be again restocked and leased by the Australian Governments to enterprising and 
responsible companies or individuals on lines nearly corresponding with those that are 
at present applied to Oyster banks in Queensland, where, at the author’s suggestion, 
a start has been already made. Western Australia, aud the Northern Territories of 
South Australia, alike possess facilities for the establishment of this highly profitable 
industry. 
The site selected by the writer for the first extra-tropical experimental 
cultivation of Meleagrina margaritifera was in Shark’s Bay, Western Australia. 
This Bay, lying roughly between the parallels of 25° and 263° south 
latitude, is noteworthy for the production of a smaller and much less valuable 
species of Pearl-shell, which receives full attention later on. In the neighbourhood 
of Dirk Hartog Island, towards the southern extremity of this Bay, there are 
