170 THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
attached
to these pearls and that the resources were well looked after. Writing
in 1699, Dr. Martin Lister alluded to the many pearls taken from the
rivers about Lorraine and Sedan. A Paris merchant showed him a
fresh-water pearl of 23 grains, valued at £400, and assured him that he
had seen some weighing 60 grains each.1
In 1779 Durival gave an extensive account2
of the Vologne fishery. He records that for sixty years pearls had been
abundant, but at the time he wrote they were very scarce.
Puton
states that, in 1806, when taking the baths at Plombières in the
Vosges, Empress Josephine formed a great liking for the Vologne pearls,
and at her request some of the mussels were sent to stock the ponds at
Malmaison. It does not appear that any favorable result followed this
transplanting.
Owing
to the extensive fisheries, the mussels became so scarce that in 1826,
when the Duchesse d' Angoulême was visiting in the Vosges, it was
impossible to secure enough pearls to form a bracelet for her. This
scarcity has continued up to the present time ; and yet in the
aggregate many pearls have been secured, so that there are few
prominent families in the neighborhood who do not possess some of
them. They are especially prized as bridal presents to Vosges maidens.
While
the Vologne pearls are of good form and of much beautv, they do not
equal oriental pearls in luster. The color is commonly milky white, but
some of them have a pink, yellow, red, or greenish tint. In size they
rarely exceed 4 grains. The Nancy museum of natural history possesses
one which weighs 5J4 grains and measures 6^2 mm. in diameter.
In western France, according to Bonnemere,3
the pearl-mussel is widely diffused, and in the aggregate many pearls
are secured therefrom. They are somewhat numerous in the river Ille
near its union with the Vilaine at Rennes ; though small, these are
commonly of good color and luster. In the department of Morbihan and
that of Finistère, many pearls have been secured, especially in the
Steir, the Odet, and in the Stang-Alla near Quimper. Small pearls,
frequently of some value, are found in the Menech near the town of
Lesneven, a few miles northeast of Brest, the great naval port of
France.
The Unto sinuatus (pictorum), the mulette of
the artists, which has a shorter and smaller shell than the
pearl-mussel, has also yielded many small pearls of good quality, as
well as shells for manufacturing
