60 
EDIBLE BRITISH MOLLUSKS. 
who died of hunger during a grievous famine^ which de- 
populated part of Guzerat. A large mausoleum or Ma- 
hometan tomb was erected to his memory in the suburbs 
of Cambay^ with an inscription, telling us that during 
this terrible scarcity the deceased had offered a measure 
of pearls for an equal quantity of grain, but not being 
able to procure it, he died of hunger.^' 
A pearl is described by Madame de Barrera, as nearly 
the size of a pigeon^s egg, and pear-shaped ; it weighed 
250 carats, and was known as “ La Peregrina,^^ and be- 
longed to the crown of Spain. It was brought from 
Panama in 1560 by Don Diego de Temes, who presented 
it to Philip II. It was then valued at fourteen thou- 
sand ducats, but Freco, the king’s jeweller, having seen 
it, said it might be worth £14,000, £30,000, <5050,000, 
£100,000, as such a pearl was priceless.” In 1779 a 
pearl, which from its shape was called the Sleeping Lion, 
was offered for sale at St. Petersburg, by a Dutchman; 
it weighed 578 carats, and was bought in India for 
£4500. 
The largest pearl known, I believe, is the one which 
was exhibited at the South Kensington Museum, in the 
loan collection, in the possession of A. J. B. Beresford 
Hope, Esq. It weighs 3 oz., is 2 inches long, 4^ inches in 
circumference, and is set as a pendant. 
The most productive pearl-fishery banks lie on the 
west coast of Ceylon, between the eighth and ninth de- 
grees of north latitude, near the level dreary beach of 
Condatchy, Aripo, and Manaar.f The other principal 
fisheries are those of the Bahrein Islands in the Persian 
Gulf, Coromandel, Catifa in Arabia ’ (which produced 
* Forbes’s ‘ Oriental Memoirs,’ voL ii. p. 18. 
t ‘ Voyage of the Novara,’ vol. i. pp. 379, 380, 381. 
