paper published by the French Academy of Science in 1717,1
Reaumur noted this condition, and suggested that pearls are misplaced
pieces of organized shell, and are formed from a secretion which
overflows from the shell-forming organ or from a ruptured vessel
connected therewith, and that the rupture or overflow is ordinarily
produced by the intrusion of some foreign or irritating substance.
Sir Edwin Arnold calls attention to this theory in his beautiful lines :
Know you, perchance, how that poor formless wretch— The Oyster—gems his shallow moonlit chalice?
Where the shell irks him, or the sea-sand frets, He sheds this lovely lustre on his grief.
In
pursuance of this idea, we find, in 1761, the Swedish naturalist
Linnaeus, "the father of natural history," experimenting in the
artificial production of pearls by the introduction of foreign bodies
in the shell, and meeting with some degree of success. His discovery
was rated so highly that it has been announced by some writers as the
reason why the great naturalist received the patent of nobility, which
is generally supposed to have been the reward for his services to
science.
It
seems that Linnaeus's discovery but verified the old saying that there
is nothing new under the sun, for later it was announced2
that in China—where so many inventions have originated—this idea had
been put to practical account for centuries preceding, and the crafty
Chinaman had succeeded in producing not only small pearly objects, but
even images of Buddha, with which to awe the disciples of that deified
teacher.
The
method consisted in slightly opening or boring through the shell of the
living mollusk and introducing against the soft body a small piece of
nacre, molded metal, or other foreign matter. The irritation causes
the formation of pearly layers about the foreign body, resulting, in
the course of months or of years, in a pearl-like growth. While these
have some value as objects of curiosity or of slight beauty, they are
not choice pearls, nor for that matter were those produced by Linnaeus.
It
will be observed that the theory of Reaumur, and also that of
Linnaeus, required the intrusion of some hard substance, such as a
grain of sand, a particle of shell, etc., to constitute a nucleus of
the pearl; and this is the accepted explanation at the present time as
to the origin of many of the baroque or irregular pearls, and likewise
the pearly "blisters" and excrescences attached to the shell. But not
so as to the
1 "Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences," Schwed. Akademie der Wissenschaften," 1717, PP- 177-194·
Vol. XXXIV, p. 88, 1772.
3 Grill, in "Abhandlungen der Königlichen
