The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-15

fishing of the natives, there are two
 companies, one English and one Chi
 nese, with headquarters at Jolo, which
 pursue the business in a systehatic
 manner, with suitable vessels, and
 equip their divers with diving suits and
 employ all the modern appliances for
 deep sea explorations. The companies
 named pay a certain sum to the Sultan
 of Jolo for the privilege of fishing. and
 that the business is profitable may be
 assumed from the fact that the Char
 tered Bank of India, Australia and Chi
 na and the Hong Kong and Shanghai
 Banking corporation have extensive in-
 terests in it.
 The conditions essential to the great
 est development of the mother-of-pearl
 and the pearl bearing mollusk are a
 reefy bottom, near mud, and especially where there is luxurious supply of
 submarine vegetation, coralsups and anot her beautiful coral growth resem- bling "coach whips" four or five feet in length. Sweeping tides and an abun-
 dance of living reefs are particularly favorable to the growth of this beauti- full iridescent mollusk. These Condi- tions exist to perfection in the waters of the Jolo archipelago, where pearl fishing is now carried on to limited extent and also along the coast of Pal awan, as well as along the Mindanao shores of the JolO and Celebes seas. It is estimated that the area suited to | the growth and propagation of the pearl oyster covers approximately fif- teen thousand square miles, an area l large enough to furnish a supply of mother pearl more than sufficient to meet the present demand of the entire
 world, and the imagination only can picture the number, beauty and value | of the beautiful pearls ''of purest ray
 serene that await discovery In the warm waters of those far off eastern seas.
 While most mollusks secreat mother of-pearl, there are few that yield pearls, and the best producer of both Is the pearl oyster of the Jolo waters. The | finding of the pearl. however, is as un- certain as the finding of rich nuggets in placer mining. It has been found that III OpeIlulB OSeI uNe IIlouSdliu SllViiS not a single pearl worth twenty five dollars was encountered. and, again, as many as a dozen have been found in a single shell; and there is story current that an Englishman a few years ago found shell devoid of the oyster, but containing sixty-five pearls.
 THE ORIGIN OF THE PEARL. There have been all sorts of theories advanced as to the origin of the pearl. One ancient author states that the Oys- ter rises to receive the raindrOps. which are aeterWard converted into pearls, and his theory obtained among the na- tives of the new world at the time of it's
 discovery, as they thought they were formed from petrfied dewdrops in con- nection with sunbeams. The prevailing idea, however is that the formation is caused by an effort on the part of the oyster in which the pearl is found to rid itself of an irritation caused by the
 presence of some foreign body, which excited the secretion of the nacreous matter in concentric layers until the foreign substance became encysted. The experience of pearl fishers lends | weight to this theory, because they find
 that shells irregular in shape, stunted in