OF THE LIFE OF LINN/EUS. 193 



« otlier. In vain did I, like other physicians, look for its head ; for 

 " the head and mouth are in each limb or division, in some dov/n- 

 " wards, and in others side-ways. No mortal will be able to know this 

 " worm, unless he is acquainted with the nature of the Polypi, upon 

 " which so much has hitherto been written. The Tccnia resembles 



them. It is propagated by the dying limbs ; and every limb is ani- 

 " mated, and grows again to be a complete body." 



As important as this discovery became to the medical world, as ad- 

 vantageous proved to LiNNiEus a second one, which he made in the 

 same year. He found out the art of making pearls. " I am at last 

 " acquainted," says he in the same letter to Haller*, " with the man- 

 " ncr in v/hich pearls are generated in their shells. I can now bring 

 " it about, that each pearl-shell, (the Mya Margaritifera so abun- 

 " dantly found in the North Sea), which can be encompassed in one's 

 " hand, will, after a lapse of between five and six years, produce a 

 " pearl of the size of a pea." — He kept this secret to himself for a long 

 time. In the diet of 1762, it became a subj eft of public discussion, 

 and the states of Swede?:, induced him, by the offer of a considerable 

 reward to communicate it to one of their representatives, a merchant 

 and diretlor of the Swedish East India Company at Gothenburgh, It 

 does not however appear, that any considerable benefit was ever de- 

 rived from this discovery. Do6lor J. E. Smith of London, the pre- 

 sent proprietor of the LinN/Ean colleftions, is also in possession of the 

 manuscript which Linn^us wrote upon the generation of pearls. This 



• Tandem intellexi, qua ratione Margaritse nascantur et generentur in Conchis ; et potero 

 jam efficere, lit quslibet concha margaritifera, qiiam licet in manu tenere, post quinque ve'l 

 six annos ferat margariiam magnitudine seminis e vicia vulgai i ibid. 



curiou,<i 



