An Australian pearl-diver, writing about this matter in “The Century” magazine a few years ago, assures us that a fifteen-foot shark, magnified by the water, and making a bee-line for one, is sufficient to make the stoutest heart quake, in spite of the assertion that sharks have never been known to attack a man in a rubber diving-dress. He adds:
Neither is the sight of a large turtle comforting when one does not know exactly what it is, and the coiling of a sea-snake around one’s legs, although it has only one’s hands to bite at, is, to say the least, unpleasant. A little fish called the stone-fish is one of the enemies of the diver. It seems to make its habitation under the pearl-shell, as it is only when picking up a shell that any one has been known to be bitten. I remember well the first time I was bitten by this spiteful member of the finny tribe. I dropped my bag of shells, and hastened to the surface; but in this short space of time my hand and arm had so swollen that it was with difficulty I could get the dress off, and then was unable to work for three days, suffering intense pain the while. Afterward I learned that staying down a couple of hours after a bite will stop any further discomfort, the pressure of water causing much bleeding at the bitten part, and thus expelling the poison.
All the oysters when brought ashore are opened in vats of water, and carefully examined for the pearls they may contain half embedded in their mantles; but very few reward the diver with gems worth selling separately or otherwise than by weight as “seed” pearls. Many divers, therefore, do not themselves take the trouble of opening what they catch, but sell them unopened at a few cents a dozen, preferring the small and steady assured income to the chances of failure or a fortune.
The round, flat, beautiful shells are saved, and their sale (for mother-of-pearl work) brings nearly as much money into the pearl-fishing communities in the course of a season as is derived from the pearls themselves.
What beauty, as well as usefulness, have shells! And how wide is the science (conchology) that deals with them, and tells us not only their structure and manner of life, but interprets the part which their extraordinary forms, ornaments, colors, and appendages play in their “struggle for existence” down in that populous green under-world of the waters!
ON THE GULF STREAM SLOPE, FROM ONE TO TWO MILES BELOW THE SURFACE.
I know a picturesque old house [writes a charming pen in one of the early volumes of “Scribner’s Monthly”] that has a many-shelved pantry devoted to the exhibition and sale of shells, collected in many a long voyage to the remotest parts of the five oceans. Apart from their scientific interest, their associations with alien races and far-off countries, how beautiful these shells are in themselves! and how readily might the prevailing vulgarities and absurdities in the decoration of glass and porcelain be corrected by studying the ceramics of nature! How, for instance, is our sense of cleanliness served and our appetite wooed by the extreme smoothness, hardness of surface, and pearly white of the oyster-shell! What decoration in the part that receives the viand, what metallizing the surface or changing it into artificial marble, or covering it up with pictures, would take the place of the pure, colorless shell?
Every species of these shells has a principle of growth, or law of form, peculiar to itself and yet based upon some more general law of form common to other species.... In the comb of Venus, for instance, the initial impulse of structure tends to produce a series of spines of a peculiar curvature, and arranged after a certain order that involves the use of similar curves. It is interesting to study the development of this simple principle into the complex and singular form of beauty comprised in the shell itself, the idea being carried into the most minute particulars—even the dark markings at the mouth being shaped like spines, and every small projection on the surface evidently being an arrested development of spines. In the Murex haustellum, on the contrary, nodules take the place of spines. In the M. endivia an entirely different idea is developed. Notice the cross-striations. Instead of prolonging themselves into cylindrically pointed spines, as in the case of the Venus’ comb, or bunching themselves into knobs, as in the M. haustellum, they expand into wonderful foliated projections, the edges of which are beautifully fluted, like the leaves of the lettuce. Another fine effect is afforded by the different texture of the inside and outside surfaces, down to the smallest foliation, the inner parts exhibiting a polished pearly white, and the outside a gray and wrinkled skin. Observe that, however rough or dull of hue the outside of a shell, its lips are always pure and often flushed with lovely color; for, as a rule (and here is another hint to decorators), Nature distinguishes by some adornment the most significant parts of her creatures, where life and use are centered.... The ocean, indeed, beautifies all it touches. Give it any rough shard, and it will so roll it about, and lick it with its waves, and smooth it with their soft attrition, that it will return you a polished and shapely nodule, exhibiting all the beauty of color and surface of which the material is capable.
