Pearls: Pearl Culture & Pearl Farming Page 356



	PEARL-CULTURE AND PEARL-FARMING 291 pellet was the only foreign substance protruding on the inside of the shell.¹ The oysters were returned to the sea without further injury, and after the lapse of a month the pellets were found covered with thin layers of nacre. Experiments in growing pearls in the abalone or Haliotis were made in 1897 by Louis Bouton, an account of which was given at the meeting of the Paris Académie des Sciences in 1898.² The tenacity of life in this mollusk makes it especially desirable for experiments of this nature. Through small holes bored into the shell, pellets of mother-of-pearl were inserted and placed within the mantle, the small holes being afterward closed up. Other nacreous pellets were introduced directly into the bronchial cavity. The objects were soon covered with thin, pearly layers, resulting in a few months in spheres of much beauty, resembling somewhat the pearls naturally produced by this mollusk. In six months, according to M. Bouton, the layers became of sufficient thickness to be attractive. Within limitations, the size of the pearl produced is in proportion to the length of time it is allowed to remain within the mollusk. The results of the experiments seem to encourage further efforts in this line, and possibly in course of time there may be a profitable business in growing pearls in abalones on the Pacific coast of the United States. Indeed, the experiments in transplanting and cultivating the pearl-oyster in Australia leads one to fancy that the culture of that species in the warm coastal waters of America is by no means an impossibility. Many other experiments along similar lines have been made more recently. An interesting feature of attempts made by Mr. Vane Sim-monds of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1896-1898, is that in order to avoid straining the adductor muscles by forcibly opening the shell while the mollusk resisted the intrusion, each selected Unio was exposed in the open air and sunshine until the valves opened; then a wooden wedge was carefully inserted in the opening, and the mollusk immediately immersed in water to revive it or to sustain life. After a few moments of immersion, the operator carefully raised the mantle from the shell, inserted the pellet of wax or other small article to be covered with nacre, drew the mantle to its normal position, removed the wedge, and returned the mollusk to a selected place in the stream at sufficient depth to avoid danger of freezing in winter. Probably it would be more satisfactory to stupefy the mollusks by means of some chemical in order to insert the pellets. Marine mollusks have been successfully stupefied by slowly adding magnesium sulphate crystals to the sea water until the animals no longer respond ¹ "La Pêche et la Culture des Huîtres Per- ² "Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Hères à Tahiti," Paris, 1885. Sciences," Vol. CXXVII, pp. 828-830.