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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XVI. 



then Director of the British Museum (Natural History), 

 remarked : — 



It happened to me a few years ago to receive a semi-official 

 inquiry from the Colonial Office as to whether a lobster was a fish, 

 because an important point in the dispute between the French and 

 English about the Newfoundland Fisheries depended upon the inter- 

 pretation of an old treaty in which the word ".fish " occurs. After 

 giving the modern naturalist's definition of a fish, by which a lobster 

 is clearly excluded from the class, of course I found it necessary to 

 remind my correspondents that in such a case the real answer to the 

 question lay in the sense in which the word was used at the time of 

 the treaty, and by those who were parties in drawing it up, and if 

 that could be ascertained it would be more to the point than the 

 strictest of scientific definitions. Now on turning to what was, in the 

 beginning of the present century, our greatest authority on the mean- 

 ing of words, I find in Johnson's Dictionary (I now quote from Todd's 

 edition, 1818) "fish" defined as "an animal that inhabits the water." 

 Without doubt this was the general and popular view, as the 

 universally used expression shell-fish, lobster and oyster fisheries, whale 

 fisheries, and even seal fisheries, abundantly testify. I therefore cannot 

 say that in a certain vague and antiquated sense of the word, " fish" 

 may not be applied to the animals of which I propose to speak to you. 



The seeker after detailed information concerning pearl 

 oysters does not find an abundance of material at his com- 

 mand. On the contrary, the literature dealing with these 

 animals is extremely poor and deficient. It is a remarkable 

 fact that although countless references to pearls occur 

 throughout history, and although the many published 

 accounts of the pearling trade form quite a literature in 

 themselves, there exists at the present time but one work in 

 the English language devoted to pearls, their history, pecu- 

 liarities, and various uses,* and no single work (so far as I 

 am aware), in any language, which gives an account of the 

 natural history, habits, and instincts of the animals by which 

 pearls are produced. 



At the present time information upon these points is only 

 to be obtained by laboriously searching over the many 



* "Pearls and Pearling Life." — E. W. Streeter, London, 1886. 



Note. — "Gold, Gems, and Pearls in Ceylon and .Southern India" — pub- 

 lished by the Observer Press in 1888 — contains much valuable information 

 on the Ceylon fisheries. 



