The Pearl, its story, its charm, and its value

by Wallis Richard Cattelle

Schooners of various sizes having several boats, carry the fishing parties to the banks and the men live on them through the entire season. The daily catches are delivered to an armed boat which carries the oysters ashore, where they are at once searched for pearls. These when found are immediately sorted and valued, a percentage going to the diver in addition to his wages, if he is a regular employee of the Company.

The oysters are found adhering to rocks by the byssus, generally in bunches, hinge-side down, curved side up and the shells slightly parted. The diver cuts them loose with a knife and deposits them in his basket or net. One hundred to a hundred and fifty is a good day's work for a naked diver, but with the appliances now being introduced, a diver in dress can raise fully double that number. It should be remembered that there are elements of uncertainty and irregularity in the catch of the meleagrina. As compared with the enormous and crowded beds of the small varieties as they exist in the Gulf of Manaar and at the island of Margarita, Venezuela, where they can be literally scooped up, the scattered bunches of the meleagrina do not afford easy data for reckoning averages.

On the coasts of China, Japan, Korea, some of the South Sea Islands, the English Channel islands, the Canary islands, about St. Malo on the coast of France, at Queen Charlotte's island and along the coast of California from north of San Francisco to the border of Lower California, at the Cape of Good Hope, India, Australia and New Zealand, a shell-fish is taken which has considerable commercial value and yields pearls to a limited extent.

It is called in this country abalone. In the Channel islands it is known as the ormer. It is the Haliotis or Ear-shell. The Greeks called it venus ear-shell and used it as a food, considering it most nutritious. Old English writers praised it as a delicious morsel under the name of ormond saying that it was bigger and infinitely better than the oyster. This shell-fish attaches itself to the rocks by a flat, disk-shaped foot and must be taken when the tide is low. The fisherman can then insert a knife by stealth under the foot and taking the fish unawares, destroy the suction. Otherwise the hold of the fish could not be broken without destroying the shell. New Zealanders call the fish itself the mutton fish.

The Japanese, Chinese and Indians of the Pacific coast have long used it as an article of food. The shells are valuable on account of the very beautiful nacreous lining which is exceptionally good material for buttons and various ornamental purposes. The lining has an exquisite play of colors in the richest tones of peacock greens and reds. There are about seventy species of the Haliotis and the shells vary greatly in size. The British ormer (H. tuberculata) is of small size, about six inches long and is silvery. The shells are sometimes called in trade aurora shells. After being well beaten to make them tender the animals are used for food.

The ormer or auris marina was esteemed by the ancients as a very sweet and luscious dish. The people of the Channel islands ornament their houses with the shells and farmers use them to frighten the birds from their corn-fields. They string several together and suspend them from the end of a slender pole stuck in the ground. The wind swaying them, makes a constant clatter. The Haliotis iris of New Zealand is green and brilliantly iridescent. A Cape of Good Hope species (H. Mida), under the epidermis is tinged with color, principally orange.

Some of the more beautiful species were formerly very abundant on the coasts of China and Japan, but the constant use of the animal for many years as a food stuff has made them less common there and the Chinese and Japanese now obtain a large part of their supply from California, where the haliotis or abalone, as it is called is taken in great quantities. The two most beautiful species found on this coast are, the Haliotis splendens, a magnificent shell of rainbow coloring in which peacock green predominates, and H. rufescens, the lining of which is red. When found, the latter is usually thickly incrusted and coated with vegetation. The green and red range from seven to ten inches, the latter being generally the larger.

Another variety, H. cracherodii, very dark green or black without, and with no apparent beauty, has a small opalescent bit inside the shell which is cut out and made into articles of jewelry. This is common in crevices of rocks. A variety called bluebacks has a bright clayey blue exterior. The Indians of the Pacific coast have used these shells as material for jewelry and decoration for centuries, but not until the button-makers of Europe and New York began to utilize them did they become an item of importance among the exports of the Pacific coast.

Few pearls are found in the abalone but they yield a considerable number of large rounded baroques and excrescences, rich and beautiful in color and of fair luster, also odd-shaped pieces like blisters matched and joined at the edges. The greens have a bronze appearance and the reds and pinks are often iridescent. Quite a number of good "peelers" are found among them. These are pearly formations which can be improved by taking off one or more of the outer skins.

Pearl-fishing, principally by Greeks, has been carried on about the west and south coast of Haiti, but lately the government has granted a concession to four of its citizens covering nine years with the privilege of renewal at the end of that period. This will prohibit all others from fishing unless they rent the privilege from the concessionaires.