poetically expressed in the following lines translated from the Lapidarium of Marbodus, a writer of the first century, A.D.—
"
At certain seasons do the oysters lie With valves wide gaping t' ward
the teeming sky And seize the falling dews, and pregnant breed The
shining globules of^th' Ethereal seed."
The assumed connexion between the character of the Pearl and the atmospheric influences which ruled at the time of its formation, finds expression in the following couplet from the same poem :—
" Brighter the offspring of the morning dew ; The evening yields a duskier birth to view."
Other
writers again give rather fuller details of the process of Pearl
formation, and inform us that—" On the sixteenth day of the month,
Nisan, the oysters rise to receive the rain drops, which are afterwards
made into Pearls."
This curious legend probably furnishes us with a clue to the nature of the gem translated Bdellium, mentioned
in the description of the Garden of Eden, (Gen. ii., 12) and already
alluded to in the introductory chapter of this work. Benjamin of
Tolida, when writing of the Indian Seas in the vicinity of Kathipha
(Ethiopia), says " The stone called Bdellius is found made by wonderful workmanship of nature, for on the twenty-fourth day
