840 
Sir Everard Home on the 
of the ships employed in the pearl fishery, furnished with a 
diving bell, to attend to every thing connected with the present 
enquiry ; and also to go down in the bell whenever it is used, 
paying attention to the objects that are seen, and noting the 
latitude and longitude, so that he may make the first begin- 
ning of a sketch of a map of the land under the sea. 
Upon stating to my friend, Mr. Children, of the British 
Museum, some of the above facts, he referred me to the 
ninth volume of the Philosophical Transactions for the fol- 
lowing remarks, which accord in every thing with what I 
have stated. 
Extract of a Letter from Hamburgh, by the learned Christo- 
phorus Sandius, concerning the wigin of pearls , Dec. i, 1673. 
Translated into English . 
“ The pearl shells in Norway do breed in sweet waters ; 
their shells are like muscles, but larger. The fish is like an 
oyster, and it produceth a great cluster of eggs like those of 
crawfishes, some white, some black (which latter yet will be- 
come white, the outer black being taken off) : these eggs when 
ripe are cast out ; and being cast out, they grow and become 
like those that cast them : but sometimes it happens that one 
or two of these eggs stick fast to the sides of the matrix, and 
are not voided with the rest. These are fed by the oyster 
against her will, and they do grow according to the length of 
time into pearls of different bignesses, and imprint a mark 
both on the fish and the shell, by the situation conform to its 
figure/' 
In a second letter, Feb. 27th, 1674, in answer to one from 
