400 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Kansas has yielded a few valuable pearls. Eleven lavender-colored ones were 
brought to a leading jewelry house in St. Louis. The best was rated at $350, and 
others at prices ranging from $50 to $150, the whole being worth $600. 
Missouri has furnished numerous reports; the earliest, at the beginning of Sep- 
tember, came from Poplar Blulf, Butler County, in the southeastern part of the State, 
where a fisherman in opening Unios for bait found two fine pearls, one pink and one 
straw colored. This was on Black River, already mentioned in its southward extension 
into Arkansas. The usual result followed, thousands turning out to search the stream 
A number were taken to St. Louis later, but most of them proved of little account. 
A fisherman living near Warsaw, Benton County, has been accustomed to bring 
into Sedalia, every autumn for five or six years, a little bag of pearls taken during 
the season from the Osage River. His annual sale has varied from $30 to $140. 
Other streams reported as yielding specimens are the Pomme de Terre and the Sac 
rivers, and Medicine Creek, which rises in Iowa. Plans were on foot at Greenfield, 
Dade County, to dredge the Sac River in that vicinity and explore the mud. The 
latest account is from near Cuba, Crawford County, on the M.eramec River, where two 
fishermen, on an excursion from St. Louis in November, got a farmer to drive across 
the stream with his drag shovel. The result was that they obtained at one “ haul ” 
three loose pearls and 301 mussels, which yielded 207 pearls, up to the size of a pea. 
The proceeds were shared between the three parties, but the farmer, who owned the 
land, forbade any further operations. 
Tennessee, where for years past the whole subject of TJnio pearls has been familiar, 
has not been so much excited as the States where there was more novelty and less 
experience in pearl-hunting. But while the former yield was chiefly along Stone 
River or Caney Fork, and then somewhat on the Calfkiller, Elk, Duck, and other 
tributaries of the Cumberland and Tennessee, and the main streams also in the cen- 
tral and western portion of the State, the last two or three years have witnessed 
great activity in a rather new district, in East Tennessee, along Clinch River. In the 
former region the business has settled down substantially to pearl-hunting in a 
moderate way by fishing parties in the summer, and by farmers in the fall, who camp 
out on the river banks after the crops are gathered in and dredge the streams with 
some system. Along Clinch River, however, the past season has witnessed all the 
incidents of the first excitement; and quite vivid and picturesque accounts were 
published of hosts of people camping along the streams, some in tents, some in the 
roughest shanties, and some going from shoal to shoal in rudely-built house-boats. 
Many pearls are reported as having brought $100 or more. The hunters are described 
as a lively, free-and-easy set of people, working hard all day, subsisting a good deal 
on fish caught in the river, and dancing at night to the banjo around the camp-fires 
that line the banks. 
In the older pearl region of Tennessee considerable activity has prevailed along 
Duck River, and large prices are claimed. Much local excitement has also been 
announced from Smithville, Dekalb County, and Arlington. 
In Kentucky an aged fisherman is reported as having obtained a large number of 
pearls — one of them worth $70 — at the mouth of Little River, which enters the 
Cumberland in Lyon County. 
In Indiana a few discoveries in the central part of the State have led to consid- 
erable newspaper comment and some excitement. Toward the end of August some 
fine pearls were found in White River only a few miles from Indianapolis. Prices 
