it
becomes the mature oyster, yet we know that it depends upon certain
circumstances of currents, the currents meeting and counteracting each
other, and so producing conditions favourable for the deposit of the
spat on the banks, and then the shells being allowed by the continuance
of favourable conditions to attain the age of pearl bearing and of
maturity. Altogether the pearl oyster is an exceedingly interesting
animal. The word " oyster" although wrong scientifically, has yet been
so long applied that we are perfectly safe in using it; for the
creature is really so much like an oyster, though it belongs to the
mussels from its possession of a byssus or beard by which it is able to
anchor itself on masses of rock, and the conditions generally
favourable for the pearl oyster are large pieces of coral and other
rocks at the bottom of the sea at an average depth of seven fathoms. It
is very interesting to see the instinct by which the oyster rises up as
high as it can attain to and find support. It has a horror of a sandy
bed. The pearl oyster, if it finds itself deposited on sand, has a foot
with which it actually walks, and it makes as good a «se of its
one foot as many human beings do of their two. It has, in truth, very
remarkable powers of locomotion, enabling it to go in search of a
fitting abode, if it finds the conditions where it has been deposited
unsuitable. After finding a suitable place of location it throws out
beautiful silk-like filaments of great strength to form the byssus by
which it anchors itself, and the foot is positively used as a hand to
adjust the filaments and fix them on the rock to which the oyster
desires to attach itself. The chief interest, of course, in connection
with the pearl oyster, is its power of depositing nacre. Any foreign
substance getting into the mantle of the animal producing irritation
is at once by a beautiful instinct coated with this nacreous mucus. The
first operation of the oyster is to provide itself with a comfortable
and smooth abode. No lady ever paid more attention to the furnishing of
her boudoir than the pearl oyster does in making an abode for itself
and its interesting little family, which consists at one time of only
12,000,000 eggs! (Laughter.) No human being, of course, ever counted j
2,000,000, but Dr. Kelaart computed that in an individual examined by
him under the microscope there were 12,000,000 of eggs, and seeing that
the creature begins breeding when one year old and continues
the process during the larger portion of its full existence you can, or
rather you cannot imagine the millions and billion's of progeny that
are produced and which float away on the sea and form food for
multitudinous fishes. Of the millions upon millions of oysters that are
produced in the young stages Only the smallest possible percentage
ultimately settles on the rocks, and of these again only a very limited
percentage come to the pearl-bearing stage. In face of the great forces
of nature that I have mentioned we are practically helpless, and all
ideas of artificial cujture are, of course, defeated. If we could place
buoys in the sea, with great coir cables or mats floating in the water,
and if we could possibly so anchor them that they would resist the
force of the winds and currents, there is no question that the pearl
oysters would fix themselves on such objects, and pearl fishing would
then become a very different and more facile operation to what it now
is. Besides directing your attention to this beautiful chart I would
ask you to look at this graphic sketch which 1 have had prepared for me
by Mr. J. L. K.. Van Dort of a diving boat and the scene at the pearl
fishery. In the background there is the guardship, one of those very
fine schooners which the Ceylon Government provides for the bringing
over of the immigrant coolies to whom Ceylon owes so much. With regard
to the steam launch which figures in the animated scene I may say that
that it is now the very effective representative of the old shark
charmer. You have all read about the romance of the pearl fishery, and
one of the chief and most interesting objects was a "charmer" who was
employed to charm away the skarks so that they did not attack the
divers. Mr. Twynam found that the last " shark charmer" instead of
being at the pearl fishery was a score of miles inland bidding for paddy rents, so he finally dispensed with the services of the shark charmer. The gun which used to be fired as a signal for
