news
of this sale created such an excitement that search for pearls was
started throughout the country. The Unios at Notch Brook and elsewhere
were gathered by the millions and destroyed, often with little or no
result. A large round pearl, weighing 400 grains, which would doubtless
have been the finest pearl of modern times, was ruined by boiling open
the shell.
During
the early part of the summer of 1889 a quantity of magnificently
colored pearls was found in the creeks and rivers of Wisconsin, in
Beloit, Rock County; Brodhead and Albany, Green County; Gratiot and
Darlington, La Fayette County; Boscobel and Potosi, Grant County;
Prairie du Chien and Lynxville, Crawford County. Of these pearls, more
than $10,000 worth were sent to New York within three months; including
a single pearl worth more than $500, and among them were pearls equal
to any ever found for beauty and coloring. The colors were principally
purplish red, copper red, and dark pink. A fine, very round pink pearl
of 30 grains was found in a Unio near St. Johns, N. B., and now belongs
to George Reynolts of Toronto, Canada.
The
lumbermen, while sailing down the Canadian rivers on their rafts,
collect Unios for food, by fastening bushes to the rear of the raft, so
that when they pass through the mussel shoals, where the rivers are
shallow, the bushes touch, the Unios close on the leaves and thin
branches, holding to them securely; and at intervals the bushes are
taken out and the Unios removed. Many brooks and rivers, among them
the Olentangg, at Delaware, Ohio, and a number of streams near
Columbus, have been completely raked and scraped, often in a reckless
manner, and consequently with little result. The general method of
collecting shells was for a number of boys and men to wade into the
mill-race or into the river to their necks, feeling for the sharp ends
of the Unio, which always project. When one was discovered in this
manner, the finder would either dive after it or lift it with his feet.
It was the custom at that time to open the shells in the water, and
once during the process a pearl the size of a pigeon's egg is said to have been dropped into the water and never recovered.
At the United States National Museum in Washington,
