The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1885-11-12
WHERE PEARLS AREF EFOUND.
description of Peculiar Industry and the
Perils That Attend 1.-THE Enemies OF
the Pearl Oyster.

Description of a Peculiar Industry and th
Perils That Attend 1.-THE Enemies Of
the Pearl Oyster.
The overfishing of the last fifteen o
twenty years is doing for pearls wha
it long ago did for oysters. Fashion
also bears its part in raising prices. an,
a good set of three black pearl shir
studs can not now be got wholesal,
much under f40. Four years ago the,
could be had for less than a third O
that price. Mother-of-pearl has riser
In the market too, and now costs near
| ly l shilling the pound at the fisheries
| where four pounds could be obtained
Tor the same money twelve years back.
The fisheries of the Red sea and the
Bay of Bengal arc still, however. as
celebrated Us they ever were in classic
days, although the fair oan no longer
hope for tho produce by the peck, as
Farro-at tsecond-hand-said they used
TO: "Altera eXorat virum semodium
margaritarum. For all the scarcity
OF pearls, we now get them also from
the Sunda isles of The Malay archipela-
go, the seas of China aud Japan, from
Panoma, Tahiti, the Gambler islands,
and Australia, The pearl market is no
longer at Rome. at the Margaritarius
porticuS; but in the hands of the Amster-
dam, Hamburg, London, and Now
York dealers, who buy I'D all this har-
vest of the 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 Ia exactly like an
exaggerated cockle-is the Mytilus
nldrttaritJeruS, or Pintadinaena, which
measures from four to six inches in
diameter and an inch and u half in
thickness. The oceanic variety differs
from the East Indian, and gives finer
gem. The Tuamotu archipelago, to
the east of the Society islands, is per-
haps the greatest pearl fishery in the
world. OF its 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 child
rem, they all dive like sea-fowl, and the
women are the most expert, Two wo-
men especially of Faiti. and one of the
Anaa or Chain island, are we'll known
In this trade-more dreadful far than
sapphire-gathering-for 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 a 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 piunges in their
days work at the beginning of the
season, which comprises the summer
months, from November to February,
they bring on hemorrhage or conges-
ton; and after some years passed in the |
paralysis is certain, Few of |
these divers work for themselves, but |
can earn 4 shlllings a day from the |
pearl-traders. With wooden tube |
some sixteen inches long, ten inches |
square, and glazed at one end, they |
prospect from their boats the bottom |
OF these translucid seas; the glass end,
which is put into the water, serving
the purpose of suppressing the eye
puzzling surface-ripple.
The diver of the Persian gulf or of |
Ceylon attaches a weight of some
twenty pounds to his feet to aid in his
descent, and carries seven or eight
pounds more of ballast in a belt. He
)rutects both eyes and ears with oiled
cotton, bandages his mouth, and goes
iown forty feet with a rope He re-
mains down from fifty-three 10 eighty
seconds and helps himself up again by
he rope. But the Pacific diver prac-
ices the conjurer's boast of mo prepa-
alton" just before the plunge he
'r she draws full breath rapjdly
hree or four times running, and final
Y, with the lungs full of air, drops
eet first to the bottom, not forty feet,
'ut twenty-five or thirty fathoms Q5O
eet TO 1oJ feeD and comes to the sur
ace again with extraordinary swift
less. unaided in any way. Each dive
lasts from sixty to ninety
econds; and only very occasionally
he astonishing maximum of three
minutes. Tho divers hardly ever bring
up more than one oyster at time; but
his is chosen as likely to contain
pearls by some fancied rule of thumb
# their own, grounded on age, form,
md color; and they hold the shells
lightly together as they mount, lest
he envious oyster should shed the
'earl, which the divers themselves are
cry quick TO conceal by swallowing if
he employers eye is not fixed on
hem. Diving-bclls have been intro
Iuced by some houses in the trade; but
he natives will no longer work in
hem, saying they bring on early paral-
sis of the legs.
Like his edible relative, the pearl
yster also has his enemies and para
ties. A fiat fish called tdheretG by the
atives of this Archipelago makes great
avages among the young fry; it re-
embles the eagle-ray, which is so de-
tructive in European oyster-beds.
There is another, long fish with
'owerful jaws for crunching the full
,rown oyster, which is called the ORR
+ kOtohe, and does not seem to have
een identified by naturalists. There
re also two univalve shell-fish-a
nureX, which spends its time boring
oies right through the oyster, and a
'holade, which scoops a nest for itself
n the upper shell, just us its fellows
20 in the rocks of our own coasts. But
marine worm, locally called the
eedlc-worm, which pierces a network
f galleries, like the book-worm or the
eredO, between the outer and the in
er surfaces of the shell, and so ruins
he mother of-pearl; which when SO
amaged is known in the trade as
There is Il small parasit-
cal sponge, too which stains or
spots" the mother -of-pearl. Polypi
scidiane and serpula all nlingle in the
ray; and while the older crabs remove
he young oysters from their beds with
heir nippers, TO be eaten at leisure,
he crab fry gets inside and billet
themselves ut bed and board on The
rown oyster until they have eaten
heir host out OF house and home. 1t
very possible that some of these enc
lies are the irritant causes of the
e;trls; in the center of which there is
lmost always some foreign substance,
uch as grain of sand or fish's egg.
! great number of small pearls are
found in one biyalve; one
18th lis, from Elizabeth or Toan is
and, in the Tuamotu group, was
hown in Paris in 1873. Some pearls
each a great size; and one from Pana-
Ia, which was presented to Philip IL .
+ Spain in 1879, is recorded to have
cen as big as a pigeons egg.
Imitation pearls - and admirable