the habits of the feathered tribe. The pearl was an egg which the oyster laid after the manner of hens.
Modern
science, more exact if less imaginative, has decided that the pearl is
due to an accident, and an inconvenient accident which frequently
befalls the parent oyster. A grain of sand, or some such minute foreign
substance, gets within the jealous valves of the mollusk and causes
great irritation to the soft body of the pulpy inhabitant. Accordingly
it endeavors to render the presence of the intruder less irksome by
coating it with exudations from its own body. In other words the grain
of sand is " scratchy," so the oyster smooths it over. Why, then, after
once coating the objectionable grain of sand and thus making it a
comfortable lodger, the oyster should gcr on for years adding layer
after layer of pearl-substance remains is truly a mystery. But such is
its habitual practice, and to this apparently aimless perseverance we
owe the existence of pearls.
