PEARLS AND PEARL FISHERIES. 
381 
Wexford are mentioned as Irish sources. Lakes in Finland are specified as yielding 
small bluish-white pearls, which are chiefly sold as Scotch pearls, which they resemble 
in character. At the Columbian Exposition at Chicago reproductions of ancient 
Irish gold jewelry were shown, in which pearls from rivers in Ireland were employed. 
The abundant Unios of Mesopotamia have not been as yet recognized as mar- 
garitiferous — a fact which seems rather surprising. It may well be, however, that 
pearls from that region would not have been distinguished by traders from the marine 
pearls of the Persian Gulf, into which those rivers discharge. As there has been little 
scientific observation in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, the precise sources have 
been unknown. 
That so few American conchologists have paid attention to American pearls is 
perhaps accounted for by the fact that they are found more frequently in old, .distorted, 
and diseased shells, which are not so desirable for collections as the finer specimens. 
Collectors who have opened many thousands of Unios have never observed a pearl of 
value. Pearls are usually found either by farmers, who devote their spare time to 
this industry and, if no result is obtained, suffer no loss, or by persons in country 
villages who are without regular occupation, but are ever seeking means for rapid 
increase of fortune. The general method of collecting shells is for boys and men to 
wade into the mill-race or into the river to their necks, feeling for the sharp ends of 
the Unio, which always project. When one is discovered the finder either dives after 
it or lifts it with his feet. It was the custom formerly to open the shells in the water, 
and once during the process a pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg is said to have been 
dropped into the water and was never recovered. Multitudes of shells that do not 
contain pearls are destroyed. Many brooks and rivers have been completely raked 
and scraped, often in a reckless manner and consequently with little result. This 
wholesale destruction has no doubt exhausted many varieties of these shells, together 
with the depredations of hogs — which have exterminated whole shoals of Unios when 
the brooks were low — and impurities introduced into the water by manufacturing 
establishments. The more eastern States are so densely populated, and the streams 
so contaminated with sewage and refuse from factories, that animal life is rapidly 
disappearing from the water-courses in many localities. 
In order to obviate this wholesale destruction, so far as pearl-hunting is con- 
cerned, it would be well to introduce into this country instruments like those that 
have been employed in Saxony and Bavaria. Oue of these is a thin, flat, iron tool 
with a bent end which is inserted in the shell. The handle is then turned to 90°, and 
the shell is opened without injury to the auimal. Another implement is a pair of 
pliers with sharp-pointed jaws and a screw between the arms, which is turned by the 
hand until the valves of the shell are sufficiently distended to see whether it contains 
a pearl. If it does not, the animal is returned to its former haunts, perhaps to propa- 
gate more valuable progeny. 
