PEARLS AND PEARL-FISHERIES. 
82 (; 
Pathological causes may also beget an irritation which is liable to 
iuilnce, in the substance of the adductor innscles, the formation of 
small and irregularly-shaped concretions, which are called Sand or 
Seed pearls and used for enriching embroidery, etc. 
British pearls have been celebrated from the earliest times for their 
size and brilliancy, the crowns uf the ancient British kings being- 
encircled with pearls, as shown by their coinages, and Suetonius 
records that the hinie of their loveliness was the chief inducement 
that led Julius Cicsar to undertake the comiuest of this country to 
obtain them. Pliny and Tacitus concur in stating that he dedicated 
and hung in the Tenii)le of Venus (Jenetrix, a buckler made of 
British pearls, and though Pliny remarks that the pearls used 
were small ami poor, yet, on the other hand, the Venerable Bede 
comments especially upon the orient lustre and brightness of the 
native pearls, while in modern times Dr. Leach has stated that pearls 
from our Unio margaritifer yiQxa often sent to India and re-imported 
to this countiy as Oriental pearls. 
In North .Vmerica the prehistoric Indians carried on the Uniu pearl 
fishery upon an extensive scale, especially in the Scioto and Miami 
valleys. The robes of their great chiefs were enriched by a lavish 
display of e.xcpiisite pearls, which were always pierced by means of 
red-hot copper wire to ensure secure attachment. These treasures 
were always buried with their owners, and hundreds of thousands of 
what had been large and magniticent pearls have been obtained from 
the burial mounds of Ohio, (leorgia and other jdaces; these are, 
however, now worthless, except as curiosities, being blackened and 
spoilt by lire, perhaps from being thrown into the flames of the altars, 
or have become rotted and cemented into masses by water filtering 
to them through the soil during their long burial. 
The Chinese who, in the thirteenth century, discovered the mode 
of liroducing pearls, also obtain pearl-covered images or other objects 
by introilucing into the .shell of the living mollusk small models of the 
figure or shape required, which become in due time covered by a pearly 
layer or deposit. 
European attem})ts to produce pearls have not been financially 
successful, although the celebrated Linnc owed his elevation to the 
noltility i)artly through his efforts to ju'oduce pearls artificially, by, it 
is sui)po.sed, luerciug small holes through the .shell and introducing 
thereliy grains of sand to form the nuclei of the desired pearls. 
