some
of our own Scots pearls as fine, more hard and transparent than any
oriental. It is true that the oriental can be easier matched, because
they are all of a yellow water, yet foreigners covet Scots pearls."
The
price in those days was regulated by general appearance and loosely
with regard to weight, rather than by definite assortment and the exact
system of reckoning by the multiple of the weight as now, for he says,
"If a Scotch pearl be of a fine transparent color and perfectly round
and of any great bigness, it may be worth 15 to 50 rix dollars, yea I
have given 100 rix dollars (about $82.00 U. S.) for one."
In
1862, Scotch pearls sold for about seventy-five cents to ten or twelve
dollars each, an extraordinary piece bringing occasionally as much as
twenty-five dollars, but after they were brought to the favorable
notice of persons of distinction and it was known that Queen Victoria
had bought one for one hundred and ten dollars, the price of them
quadrupled. In the time of Charles II. of England an Irish pearl
weighing 144 grains was valued at two hundred
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