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Ch. 14: Pearls - Facts & Fancies

Ch. 13: Imitation & Doctored Pearls Page of 358 Ch. 14: Pearls - Facts & Fancies Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
FACTS AND FANCIES
In ancient days there was a belief in the east that at the full of the moon the pearl-oyster rose to the surface of the sea and opened its shell to receive the falling dew-drops. These congealing, hardened into pearls. Similarly, the natives of India believed that Buddha in certain months showered upon the earth, dew-drops from heaven, which the oyster, floating on the waters to breathe, received and held until they hardened and became pearls. These poetical imaginations of the Orientals were carried west with the pearls. Poets embodied them in verse. Prose writers, losing the poetry of the fable, trimmed them to the bare state­ments of impossible facts. An English writer early in the eighteenth century speaking of the mussels in the streams of northern England said that "gaping eagerly and sucking in their dewy streams they did conceive and bring forth a great plenty of pearls." Later writers also attributed the origin of
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Ch. 13: Imitation & Doctored Pearls Page of 358 Ch. 14: Pearls - Facts & Fancies
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