"The best of the false pearls," said the captain, "are made by what is known as Jaquin's process.
"M. Jaquin was a manufacturer of beads in France, and he spent a great deal of time and money in trying to make his beads better than any other man's. One day he was walking in his garden, and observed a remarkable silvery lustre on some water in a basin. It instantly occurred to him that if he could put that lustre on his beads, he would have something decidedly new.
"So he called his old servant, and asked what had been in the water. She answered that it was nothing but some little fish called ablettes, that had been crushed in the basin, and she had neglected to throw the water out.
M. JAQUIN'S EXPERIMENT.
"M. Jaquin was very glad, for once, that she had neglected her duty. He began experimenting with the scales of the ablette, or bleak, a little fish about the size of a sardine, and very abundant in certain parts of Europe. After several trials he adopted the plan of washing the scales several times in water, and saving the sediment that gathered at the bottom of the basin. This was about the consistency of oil, and had the lustre he desired. Next, he blew some beads of very thin glass, and after coating the inside of a bead with this substance, he filled it up with wax, so as to give it solidity. Thus the fish-scales gave the lustre, the glass gave the polish and brilliancy that we find on the genuine pearl, and the wax furnished a solid backing to the thin glass. This is the process of making false pearls; and it is fortunate that the bleak is very abundant, or he would run the risk of extermination.
THE BLEAK.