Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1885-11-06

sea.
There are numerous bivalves which
give pearls, bad, indifferent or better;
but the true pearl oyster-if oyster it can
be called, for it is exactly like an exag-
gerated cockly- the Mytilus, margari-
Uterus, or Pintadina M, which measures
from four to six inches in diameter and
an inch and half in thickness. The
oceanic variety differs from the East In
dian, and gives finer gem. The Tua-
motu archipelago, to the east of the So
ciety islands, is perhaps the greatest
pearl fishery in the world. OF It's eighty
islands there are only some half dozen
whose waters do not produce the pearl
oyster The natives OF this group know
no industry but fishing Men, women,
and children, they all dive like sea fowl,
and the women are the most expert.
Two women especially of Faiti, and one
of Anaa or Chain island, are well-known
in this trade-more dreadful far than
sapphire gathering plunging into
twenty-five fathoms of water, in the
teeth of sharks, and remaining as long
as three whole minutes under water. A
famous diver of Anaa escaped not long ago
from shark with the loss of breast
and an arm, and many of them go down
never to come up again. If they make
too many plunges in their days work at
the beginning of the season, which COM
prises the summer months, from Novem-
Der to February, they bring on hemor-
rhage or congestion; and, after some
years passed in the occupation, paralysis
is certain. Few of these divers work for
themselves, but can earn four shillings a
day from the pearl traders. With a
wooden tube some sixteen inches long,
ten inches square, and glazed at one end,
they prospect from their boats the bot
tom OF these translucid seas; the glass
end, which is put into the water, serving
the purpose of suppressin9 the eye-puz-
cling surface ripple.
The diver of the Persian gulf or of
Ceylon attaches weight of some twenty
pounds to his feet to aid in his descent,
and carries seven or eight pounds more
of ballast in his belt. He protects both
eyes and ears with oiled cotton. ban
1ages his mouth, and goes down forty feet
with a rope. He remains down from
tifty-three to eighty seconds, and helps
himself up again by the rope. But the
Pacific diver practices the conjuror's
boast Of "no preparation" Just before
the plunge he or she draws full breath
tapidly three or four times running, and
finally, with the lungs full of air, drops
feet first to the bottom not forty feet,
but twenty-five or thirty fathoms (150
feet to 1870 feet and comes to the surface
again with extraordinary swiftness, UNI
aided in any way. Each dive generally
lasts from sixty to ninety seconds; and
only very occasionally the astonishing
maximum of three minutes. The divers
hardly ever bring up more than one oys-
Ter at time; but this is chosen as likely
to contain pearls by some fancied rule of
thumb of their own, grounded on age,
form and color; and they hold the
shells tightly together as they mount.
lest the envious oyster should she'd the
pearl, which the divers themselves are
very quick to conceal by swallowing if
The employers eve is not fixed on them.
Diving bells have been introduced by
some houses in the trade; but the natives
will no longer work in them, saying
they bring on early paralysis of the
,egs.
Like his edible relative, the pearl oys-
te7 also has his enemies and parasites A
lat fish, called tahereta by the natives
of this Polynesian archipelago, makes
great ravages among the young fry; it
resembles the eagle lay, which is so de-
Btructive in European oyster beds. There
is another, a long fish with powerful
jaws for crunching the ll-grown oys-
ter, which is called the oiri or kotohe,
and does not seem to have been identi-
fed by naturalists. There are also two
univalve shell fsh-a murex, which
spends its time boring holes right
through the oyster, and pholode, which
scoops nest for itself in the upper
she'll, just as his fellows do in the rocks
Of our own coast.
But the worst pest of ali is probably a
marine worm, locally called the needle
worm, which pierces network of
galleries, like the book worm or the
teredo, between the outer and inner sur.
faces of the shell, and so ruins the
mother of pearl, which, when so damag-
ed is known in the trade as worm eaten.
There is u small parasitical sponge, too,
which stains or ''spots'' the mother of
pearl. Polypi, Ascidians and Serpulae
all mingle in the fray; and while
the older crabs remove the
young oysters from their beds
with their nippers to be eaten
Mt leisure, the crab fry get inside and
billet themselves at bed and board on
the grown oyster until they have eaten
their host out of house and home. 1t is
very possible that some of these enemies
are the irritant causes of the pearls, in
the centre of which there is almost al
ways some foreign substance, such as a
grain of sand or fish's egg. A great
number Of small pearls are sometimes
found in one bivalve; one with 115, from
Elizabeth or Toan Island, in the Tua-
motu group, was shown in Paris in 1878.
Some pearls reach great size, and one
from Panama, which was presented to
Philip II. of Spain in 1879, is recorded
to have been as big as a pigeons egg.
Imitation pearls-and admirable imi-
tations the best of them are are not I'M
common. They were first invented in
1866 by one Joaquin, French enameller
on glass The little glass globules of
which they consist are first lined with a
mixture of isinglass and Essence of the
East, " and then stuffed with melted
wax. This essence d'Orient is made of
the pearly matter which is found at the
base of the scales of the whiting, pre-.
served in ammonia. st James Gazette.
The more freely sympathy and affea.
ton are extended, and the more gladly