CHAP. 54.—PEARLS; HOW THEY ARE PRODUCED, AND WHERE.
The first rank then, and the very highest position among all
valuables, belongs to the pearl. It is the Indian Ocean that
principally sends them to us: and thus have they, amid those
monsters so frightful and so huge which we have already described,[1] to cross so many seas, and to traverse such lengthened
tracts of land, scorched by the ardent rays of a burning sun:
and then, too, by the Indians themselves they have to be sought
in certain islands, and those but very few in number. The
most productive of pearls is the island of Taprobane, and that
of Stoidis, as already mentioned[2] in the description of the
world; Perimula,[3] also, a promontory of India. But those
are most highly valued which are found in the vicinity of
Arabia,[4] in the Persian Gulf, which forms a part of the Red
Sea.
The origin[5] and production of the shell-fish is not very different from that of the shell of the oyster. When the genial
season of the year[6] exercises its influence on the animal, it is
said that, yawning, as it were, it opens its shell, and so receives
a kind of dew, by means of which it becomes impregnated;
and that at length it gives birth, after many struggles, to the
burden of its shell, in the shape of pearls, which vary according to the quality of the dew. If this has been in a perfectly
pure state when it flowed into the shell, then the pearl produced is white and brilliant, but if it was turbid, then the
pearl is of a clouded colour also; if the sky should happen to
have been lowering when it was generated, the pearl will be
of a pallid colour; from all which it is quite evident that the
quality of the pearl depends much more upon a calm state of
the heavens than of the sea, and hence it is that it contracts a
cloudy hue, or a limpid appearance, according to the degree of
serenity of the sky in the morning.
If, again, the fish is satiated in a reasonable time, then the
pearl produced increases rapidly in size. If it should happen
to lighten at the time, the animal shuts its shell, and the pearl
is diminished in size in proportion to the fast that the animal
has to endure: but if, in addition to this, it should thun-
der[7] as well, then it becomes alarmed, and closing the shell in
an instant, produces what is known as a physema,[8] or pearl-bubble, filled with air, and bearing a resemblance to a pearl,
but in appearance only, as it is quite empty, and devoid of
body; these bubbles are formed by the abortion of the shellfish. Those which are produced in a perfectly healthy state
consist of numerous layers, so that they may be looked upon,
not inappropriately, as similar in conformation to the callosities
on the body of an animal; and they should therefore be cleaned
by experienced hands. It is wonderful, however, that they
should be influenced thus pleasurably by the state of the heavens, seeing that by the action of the sun the pearls are turned
of a red colour, and lose all their whiteness, just like the human
body. Hence it is that those which keep their whiteness the
best are the pelagie, or main-sea pearls, which lie at too
great a depth to be reached by the sun's rays; and yet these
even turn yellow with age, grow dull and wrinkled, and it
is only in their youth that they possess that brilliancy which
is so highly esteemed in them. When old, too, the coat grows
thick, and they adhere to the shell,[9] from which they can
only be separated with the assistance of a file.[10] Those pearls
which have one surface flat and the other spherical, opposite
to the plane side, are for that reason called tympania,[11] or tambour-pearls. I have seen pearls still adhering to the shell;
for which reason the shells were used as boxes for unguents.
In addition to these facts, we may remark that the pearl is
soft[12] in the water, but that it grows hard the instant it is
taken out.
1. In c. 2 of the present Book.
2. In B. vi. cc. 24 and 28.
3. See B. vi. c. 23. Ælian, Hist. Anim. B. xv. c. 8, says to the same
effect, but calls it "Perimuda, a city of India."
4. Ælian, Hist. Anim. B. x. c. 13. It has been already remarked, in the
sixth Book, that the ancients looked upon the Persian Gulf as forming
part of the Erythræan or Red Sea.
5. The pearl itself, Cuvier says, is nothing else but an extravasation, so
to say, of the juices, whose duty it is to line the interior of the shell, to
thicken and so amplify it; and consequently, it is produced by a malady.
It is possible, he says, for them to be found in all shell-fish; but they have
no beauty in them, unless the interior of the shell, the nacre, or, as we call
it, the mother of pearl, is lustrous and beautiful itself. Hence it is, that
the finest of them come from the east, and are furnished by the kind of
bivalve, called by Linnæus, "Mytilus margaritiferus," which has the most
beautiful mother of pearl in the interior that is known. The parts of the
Indian sea which are mentioned by Pliny, are those in which the pearl
oyster is still found in the greatest abundance.
6. All this theory, as Cuvier says, is totally imaginary.
7. Isidorus of Charax, in his description of Parthia, commended by
Athenæus, B. iii., says, on the other hand, that the fish are aided in bringing forth, by rain and thunder.
8. From the Greek fush/ma, "air—Bubble."
9. It sometimes happens, Cuvier says, that the secretion which forms the
mother-of-pearl makes tubercles in the interior of the shell, which are the
pearls adhering to the shell here spoken of.
10. Persius alludes to this in Sat. ii. 1. 66. "Hæc baccam conchæ
rasisse;" "to file the pearl away from its shell."
11. From this passage we learn that the "tympana," or hand-drums of
the ancients, were often of a semiglobular shape, like the kettle-drums of
the present day.
12. Cuvier remarks that this is not the fact: the concretions are perfectly
hard before the animal leaves the water.