[779] Massarii in Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. ix. Castigationes. Bas. 1537, 4to, cap. 35.
[780] Mercati Metallotheca, p. 211.
[781] These silver-coloured particles were examined by Reaumur, who gave a description of them in Histoire de l’Académie, année 1716, p. 229. [In the scales of fishes, the optical effect is produced in the same manner as in the real pearl, the grooves of the latter being represented by the inequalities formed by the margins of the concentric laminæ of which the scales are composed.]
[782] The artist no doubt had in view eastern pearls.
[783] Girasol. This word, which is wanting in most dictionaries, signifies opal, and sometimes that stone called cat’s-eye, Silex catophthalmus, pseudopalus, &c. Couleur de girasol is applied to semitransparent milk-white porcelain.
[784] Coques de perles are flat on one side, and are used for ornaments, one side of which only is seen. By Pliny they are called physemata. Artificial pearls of this kind have, for some time past, been employed in making ear-rings. Our toymen, after the French, give these pearls the name of perles coques; but the following account of Pouget in Traité des Pierres Précieuses, Paris 1762, i. p. 20, makes me dubious respecting them. “La coque de perle,” says he, “is not formed in a pearl-shell like the pearl; it is procured from a kind of snail found only in the East Indies. There are several species of them. The shell of this animal is sawn in two, and one coque only can be obtained from each. The coques are very small, and one is obliged to fill them with tears of mastic to give them a body, before they can be employed. This beautiful snail is found generally in the sea, and sometimes on the shore.” May not Pouget here mean that kind of snail which others call burgeau, the shells of which are, in commerce, known by the French under the name of burgaudines? Should that be the case, the animal meant would be the Nautilus Pompilius, as may be concluded from Histoire des Antilles, par Du Tertre, ii. p. 239. For the author says, “C’est de leur coque que les ouvriers en nacre tirent cette belle nacre qu’ils appellent la burgaudine, plus estimée que la nacre de perle.” Irregular pearls are called baroques, or Scotch pearls, because abundance of such were once found at Perth in Scotland. Some years ago artificial pearls of an unnatural size, called Scotch pearls, were for a little time in fashion.
[785] A complete account of the art of making glass pearls is contained in a book, which I have however not seen, entitled, L’Art d’imiter les perles fines, par M. Varenne de Beost. An extract from it may be found in Dictionnaire des Arts et Métiers, par M. Joubert, iii. p. 370. See also the articles perle and able in the Encyclopédie, i. p. 29; xii. p. 382.
[786] Traité Générale des Pesches, par. ii. p. 403, tab. 23, fig. 1 et 2.
[787] Ichthyologia, Hamb. 1624, 4to, p. 12, tab. 1, fig. 2, albula.
[788] In the Almanach de Strasburg for 1780, p. 76, among the commodities sold there were, Des écailles d’ablettes dont on tire l’essence d’orient employée pour les fausses perles.