740 Pearls and Pearl Fisheries. [July, 
valued at $90 to $125 per ton. The gulf beds in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries were very prolific. Eight hundred 
native divers were regularly employed, and the annual value of 
the pearls was $60,000. The fishery became exhausted, however, 
and was gradually abandoned. Of late years it has looked up 
again, and the Mexican government has farmed out the beds to 
private parties who have been in the habit of granting licenses to 
persons provided with the equipment for fishing, This method 
ignores the preservation of the beds as such, and each licensee 
endeavors to strip them as thoroughly as possible. Rubber 
armor is used, and natives of Central America are employed as 
divers. Even with these appliances the work is attended with 
risk, and deaths are not uncommon. About three tons of fresh 
shells are obtained by an ordinary party per day from water 
about forty feet deep when the weather is fair. About one shell 
in a thousand contains a pearl, but these are often of excellent 
quality. The natives work on shares of the pearls; the shells go 
to the vessel’s account. The working season is about 
months. In 1882, 563 barrels of these shells were shipped from 
San Francisco to Liverpool by sea, but this is only a small part 
of the catch, which is usually shipped by coastwise steamer to 
Panama and thence to Europe The pearl fisheries of the Carib- 
bean sea are more productive than those of the west coast, though 
still much less so than in former times. The species which oe ic 
stitutes them is chiefly the Meleagrina squamulosa Lam., know? 
to the trade as “ blue-edged” or “ black-lipped” pearl shell. ae 
these most of the so-called “smoked pearl” buttons are i 
The dark layers of the shell, present in most pearl oysters, are i 
thicker and brighter in this species than in any other. Thes® ne 
are worth $150 to $225 aton. They are found on several of d 
West Indian islands, the northern coast of South America® of 
even around on the coast of Brazil. The island of Margarita, ° a 
the Venezuelan coast, is famous for its pearls. In 1597 about 359 
valued at $5,000; and a third at $3,000, It is many years since such good 1% ie 
has attended the divers of this region, though the product of pearls of l 
has been tolerably constant.—( Mex. Financero, Jan., 1883).— W. H. D. 
