THE CULT OF SHELLS 67 
that a theory connecting them with dewdrops is 
geographically very widespread. From _head- 
quarters on the shores of the Red Sea, where 
fisheries were established long before the time 
of the Ptolemies, the appreciation of pearls spread 
far and wide, in the New World as well as in the 
Old. It is well known that pearls took pre- 
cedence over all other gems among the Romans 
and “according to Suetonius, the great motive of 
Cesar’s expedition into Britain in 55 B.c. was to 
obtain its pearls, which were so large that he used 
to try the weight of them by his hand.” These 
were, of course, the productions of freshwater 
mussels, The modern zoologist knows that pearls 
are produced by the reaction of the mollusk’s skin 
to some minute focus of irritation, which may be 
the microscopic larva of a tapeworm or fluke, or 
a blob of conchin (the organic foundation of the 
shell), or even an inorganic particle. This was, of 
course, unknown to the ancients, but it is interest- 
ing to find from remote antiquity the outcrop of 
various recipes for the artificial stimulation of 
pearl-production within the mollusk. With a 
different smack are the old tales that if pearls are 
sealed up for a time in a box along with a little rice 
they will be found to have multiplied. The 
originals will not be any the worse; only the ends 
of the rice-grains will show an appearance of having 
been nibbled at. Given beautiful, mysterious, 
costly things like pearls, we have no difficulty in 
understanding the halo of secondary virtues. Burnt 
