DESTRUCTION OF OYSTERS. 
19:1 
diamonds,* rendered the fisheries of Cubagua ies 3 lucrative. 
At the same time, the oysters which yielded the pearls 
became scarcer, not, because, according to a popular tradi- 
tion, they were frightened by the sound of the oars, and 
removed elsewhere ; but because their propagation had been 
impeded by the imprudent destruction of the shells by thou- 
sands. The pearl-bearing oyster is of a more delicate nature 
tlian most ot the other acephalous mollusca. At the island of 
teylon, where, in the bay of Condeatcliy, the fishery employs 
six hundred divers, and where the annual produce is more 
than half a million of piastres, it has vainly been attempted 
to transplant the oysters to other parts of the coast. The 
government permits fishing there onlv during a sino-le month • 
while at Cubagua the bank of shells was fished at all seasons! 
To form an idea of the destruction of the species caused by 
the divers, we must remember that a boat sometimes collects 
m two or three weeks, more than thirty-five thousand oysters! 
J he animal lives but nine or ten years ; and it is only in its 
tourtli year that the pearls begin to show themselves. In 
ten thousand shells there is often not a single pearl of value, 
tradition records that on the bank of Margareta the fisher- 
men opened the shells one by one: in the island of Ceylon 
the animals are thrown into heaps to rot in the air; and to 
separate the pearls which are not attached to the shell, the 
animal pulp is washed, as miners wash the sand which con- 
tains grains of gold, tin, or diamonds. 
At present Spanish America furnishes no other pearls for 
trade than those of the gulf of Panama, and the mouth of 
the Ilio de la ilacha. On the shoals which surround Cubagua 
Coche, and the island of Margareta, the fishery is as much 
neglected as on the coasts of California.t It is believed at 
Cumana, that the pearl-oyster has greatly multiplied after 
two centuries of repose; and in 1812, some new attempts 
\iere made at Margareta for the fishing of pearls, It has 
been asked, why the pearls found at present in shells which 
become entangled m the fishermen’s nets are so small, and 
l ,° f diarnontis w;,s invented by Lewis de Berquen, in 
lino, but the art became common only in the following century. 
t I am astonished at never haring heard, in the course of my travels, 
° P? ar s /°l nt l r m - -water shells of South America, though several 
species of the Unto genus abound in fhe rivers of Peru. 
VOL. I. 
O 
