Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1909-03-19
HUMBLE OYSTER WORKS HARD TO
GET ITS LIVING, THEN THE
CHINESE KILL 1T FOR
PEARLS 1T MAKES.

The man who first persuaded the
humble and lethargic oyster to work
for him achieved a victory over the
animal creation as worthy of our laurels
at least at the point of ingenuity-as
the subject of the horse or the OK.
Nothing but the keen desire of greed
could have suggested such feat, a
determination to spur the mollusk to a
greater industry in the production of
jewel that must have charmed it's first
discOverer by its soft and splendid
beauty. We shall never know what it
was that first persuaded the oyster to
do what nothing but an oyster can do,
who goaded and harrassed that torpid
intelligence to minister to the vanity of
men. But he deserves an Immortality
of fame that can never now be con-
ferred upon him.
The problem was no doubt first sug
gested by the fact that even among
pearl bearing oysters the number of
shells containing pearls was very small.
Scores might be opened without the
sight of a single treasure to reward the
seeker, says the New York Herald. If
the oyster had any free will in the
matter at all and it is hard to associate
the oyster with the idea of free will
why should single specimen yield the
shining jewel while its comrades for
yards around were content to lie in un-
productive sloth? The conditions of
temperature, food and location were
identical. Why, then, these differences
in activity?
The Chinese had solved the problem
even before it had presented itself to
the Western mind. The guileless
Celestial knew how the milk got into
the cocoanut, or rather the pearl into
the oyster shell, long before the Western
mind had evolved the poetic but not
very profound theory that pearls were
congealed dewdrops. although how the
drewdrop penetrated the bivalve was
never clearly stated.
The drewdrop theory finally gave way
to the more tolerable belief that pearls
were the eggs of the oyster; but even
then no one seems to have wondered
why the number of pearl-bearing oysters
should be so small and at time wher
race suicide had not become human
much less than an animal, failing.
But to return to the Chinese, VIII.
was at work upon this problem man,
centuries ago, but who has never shown
any great eagerness to share his knowl
edge with the white Seviis" of tn,
outside world. The Chinese speedil,
discovered that the pearl was due t,
nothing more than an attempt on tn,
part of the oyster to protect himsel
from the irritation Of a foreign intrusion
such as grain of sand, into his shell
The oyster, beneath rough and for
bidding exterior, conceals tender an,
sensitive nature, and it will sometime
happen that fragment of rock or a.
atom of shell is washed by the tide int
his fortress and refuses to be dislodged
Making virtue of necessity and an
noyed by the angularities of the unwel
come guest, he proceeds to cover j
smoothly with secretion similar to tn
nacre with which he lines the interior O
his own shell, and the result is a pear
The process is simplicity itself whe
you know how it is done, and the inger
ious Chinese proceeded at once to tur
his discovery to his own advantage.
DIR. ID. Il. Macgowan, in the Journs
of the Society of Arts, tells US some
thing OF a process that is now no longe
secret. The shells are gently separate
and the nucleus Of the pearl is inserte
under the fleshy mantle within.
small fragment of mud is used for tn