|
40
|
THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
|
||
|
|
|||
|
her will" from those generally entertained by naturalists at the present time.
However,
Oliver Goldsmith settled the matter by declaring briefly : "Whether
pearls be a disease or an accident in the animal is scarce worth
enquiry." x Thus it seems that notwithstanding all that had
been written and the extended attention given to the subject, theory
prevailed to the almost complete exclusion of practical investigation,
with little intelligent advance over Topsy's " 'spect they just growed."
Owing,
doubtless, to the scarcity of pearl-bearing mollusks in their
vicinities, naturalists of Europe were somewhat slow in giving
attention to the origin of pearls. This is further accounted for by
the fact that the gems occur more frequently in old and diseased shells
than in the choice specimens which have naturally attracted the notice
of conchologists.
One
of the first of the original observations made on this subject was that
by Rondelet, who, in 1554, advanced the idea that pearls are diseased
concretions occurring in the mollusca, similar to the morbid calculi in
the mammalia.2
The
first writer to intimate the similarity in structural material or
substance between pearls and the interior of the shell in which they
are formed, appears to have been Anselmus de Boot (circa 1600),
who wrote that the pearls "are generated in the body of the creature of
the same humour of which the shell is formed; . . . for whenever the
little creature is ill and hath not strength enough to belch up or
expel this humour which sticketh in the body, it becometh the rudiments
of the pearl ; to which new humour, being added and assimilated into
the same nature, begets a new skin, the continued addition of which
generates a pearl."3 The Portuguese traveler, Pedro
Teixeira (1608), stated : "I hold it for certain that pearls are born
of and formed of the very matter of the shell and of nothing else. This
is supported by the great resemblance of the pearl and the oyster-shell
in substance and color. Further, whatever oyster contains pearls has
the flesh unsound and almost rotten in the parts where the pearls are
produced, and those oysters that have no pearls are sound and clean
fleshed." 4
Somewhat
more than one hundred years later, this theory was confirmed by
investigations made by the famous physicist Reaumur (1683-1757).
Microscopic examination of cross sections of pearls show that they are
built up of concentric laminae similar, except in curvature, to those
forming the nacreous portion of the shell. In a
1 Goldsmith, "History of the Earth and '"Gemmarum et Lapidutn Historia," Han-Animated Nature," 1774, Vol. VI, p. 54. ovise, 1609.
2 Rondelet, "Universae Aquitilium Histo- 4"The Travels of Pedro Teixeira," Hak-riœ Pars Altera," Lugduni, 1554. luyt Society, p. 180.
|
|||
|
|
|||