|
PEARL FISHERIES
|
||
|
|
||
|
turned away from it. The custom of the peasantry is to fish for them in the autumn after harvest.
Pearl-mussels
are found also in Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Mesopotamia, Lapland,
Canada, Labrador, the Hawaiian Island Oahu, Japan (especially the
anodonta japonica), China, the United States and Italy, in the Gwaai
and Shangani rivers of Southern Rhodesia, South Africa. Nowhere are
they found however in such quantities or in so many varieties as in the
United States. The number taken from the streams here of late years has
been so great that the shells have largely displaced the marine
Egyptian and have affected the demand for the better qualities of South
Sea mother-of-pearl. The pearls found in them also have been of such
quality and quantity that they now have an important place among the
jewels of the world.
Old
records and the contents of Indian mounds show that the unio was taken
from the rivers by the aborigines for the pearls they sometimes
contained; but no wide interest in this possible wealth of the rivers
appears to
257
|
||
|
|
||