and the other Venezuelan fisheries where the proportion of cracked pearls is greater than in the Indian and South Sea fisheries.
The
skins of a pearl may also be removed by the application of weak acids,
but this method requires careful and expert handling or the acid will
act irregularly and leave the surface, if improved in luster, uneven
and pitted.
Few
important fresh-water baroques and irregular pearls leave the west
without receiving the attention of the speculators through whose hands
they pass, and the scraping is often very roughly done. Rough and
discolored projections are broken or filed off and then scraped over
with a knife edge. While fresh, the broken skin edges left thus will
often pass unnoticed by a careless buyer, but they become discolored
and dead later. Unless one buys of a dealer in whom implicit confidence
may be placed, not alone for honesty but for his knowledge of pearls,
it is better to examine all pearls under a glass before purchasing.
As
many persons both in the trade and out of it, are not sufficiently
familiar with pearls to be quite sure of their ability to detect the
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