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FACTS AND FANCIES
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ing
to distinguish the male from the female. This fable also travelled west
and was received by the credulous. M. S. Lovell in his "Edible
Mollusks" says, "A Spanish lady informed a friend of mine that if seed
pearls were shut up in cotton-wool they would increase either in size
or in number."
To
this day the ancient superstition, or belief, is believed not only by
sea-board Malays, but by Europeans, and there are those who claim to
own breeding pearls and to have bred from them. The pearls are placed
in a box with a layer of cotton-seed and a few grains of rice, under
and over them. The box is then closed and in a year, if one account
given is a fair statement of average results, one may look for a
four-fold increase, though the children will not be as large as the
parents. Some of them may be as large as a pin head. The rice will look
crumbly and worm-eaten.
Another
breeder of pearls says that the breeding pearls themselves grow in size
and if the box has been kept undisturbed, there will be found with them
at the end of the year others of various sizes, some almost
microscopic.
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