PEARL-CULTURE AND PEARL-FARMING
Some asked how pearls did grow, and where.
Then spoke I to my girl, To part her lips, and show them there
The quarelets of pearl.
Herrick, The Quarrie of Pearls.
T
HE great profit that
would accrue from an increased output of pearls has long directed
attention to the problem of bringing this about by artificial means. In
his life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus, a Greek writer of the
third century, repeats a story afloat at the time, which credited the
Arabs of the Red Sea with possessing some method of growing pearls
artificially. The story as it reached Greece was that they first poured
oil upon the sea for the purpose of calming the waves, and then dived
down and caused the oysters to open their shells. Having effected
this, they pricked the flesh with a sharp instrument and received the
liquor which flowed from the wounds into suitable molds, and this
liquor there hardened into the shape, color, and consistence of the
natural gems.1
While
the description given by Philostratus is charged with many improbable
details, and could scarcely develop belief, even in the most credulous,
as to the exact method of procedure, it seems that the story may not
have been wholly without foundation, and that attempts were made at
that remote date to stimulate the growth of pearls.
In
more modern times, the possibility of aiding or starting pearly
formations in mollusks seems first to have been conceived by the
Chinese about the fourteenth century. In 1736 there appeared in that
storehouse of Oriental information, "Lettres édifiantes et curieuses
écrites des missions étrangères,"2 a communication from F.
X. de Entrecolles, dated Pékin, 4th November, 1734, which set forth
that there were people in China who busied themselves with growing
pearls,
1 Philostratus, "Vita Apollonii," Lib. Ill, c. 57, edit. Olearii, p. 139. Also see Konrad von Gessner, "Historic natura," Lib. IV, p. 634. 2 Vol. XXII, pp. 425-437.
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