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

by Wallis Richard Cattelle

Another breeder of pearls says that the breeding pearls themselves grow in size and if the box has been kept undisturbed, there will be found with them at the end of the year others of various sizes, some almost microscopic. A year later these would be larger. It is also said that when a pearl is about to breed, a small black speck makes its appearance on the surface, and that during the period of breeding the pearl changes its shape from a sphere to an irregular ovoid, and develops layers of scales on the surface visible to the naked eye.

After a time, the breeding pearls change their orient to a dirty white, the scales having peeled off. In all cases the rice looks as though some beetle had taken a circular bite out of the end of each kernel. Somehow a perusal of the accounts of the remarkable results, leaves the reader with a conglomerate impression of transformed rice and imagination.

Nevertheless, the breeding of pearls in cotton-wool or cotton-seed with rice, is asserted and believed, and the methods by which the wonder is accomplished may be had with great circumstance and some variations from those who have experimented. No greater evidence exists of the child-like faith of people in the old times than the incredible stories about precious stones which were current in those days.

It is equally wonderful that although it took centuries to disprove them, they received credence for more centuries after they were shown to be impossible and one hears those same delightful fairy stories about angel's tears, drops of dew from heaven, raindrops, etc., seriously quoted in this matter-of-fact land to-day, often by people who after a moment's thought would become conscious of their fallacy.

But romance abhors reason, and though oysters cannot rise to the surface of the sea, nor raindrops pass immaculate through the ocean to the gaping mollusks, nor the downpour of one season increase the yield at once of things which are the growth of years, there will long remain some who will refuse the dictum of the biologist, that unless the dews of heaven and the tears of angels carry much lime in solution, the calcareous surroundings of the oyster's bed must have more to do with the genesis of the pearl than anything dropped into the ocean by the clouds above it, and will still cling to fancy in the face of fact. Meantime the priests of Buddha exact charity oysters from the fishers of their faith, that the god thus propitiated may cause the oysters to yield more pearls.

A question often raised, and which by its periodical revival seems to be a favorite with newspapers and magazines, as well as, to the general public, is, "Do pearls live and die?" It originated probably in observations of certain changes that occasionally take place in pearls which could be readily construed by a speculative or imaginative mind to mean death. Sometimes with pearls the brilliancy of youth fades and passes and the clear skin of early days takes on the hue of age.

If now a ready pen waited on fancy to state the facts it would establish an imaginative theory for centuries, for like gossip, a thing once printed in a book will long pass on unquestioned and be quoted or re-stated many times. There are pearls which for certain qualities invite as a descriptive term the word live. There are others which by comparison appear, and are described, as dead. Then there are others that lose by untoward circumstances the live qualities they once possessed and without dying become dead pearls. The calcite carbonate crystals of which they are formed dissolve in acids and are affected to a certain extent by the acidity of the excretions of the human skin, sufficiently in some cases to destroy, or at any rate dim, their luster.

Gases in the atmosphere, sudden changes in temperature, heat, and various other influences operate more or less in the same direction. The chemical changes thus produced might with poetic license be called the death of the pearl and in a sense the term would be true were the whole pearl involved, but as a rule these misfortunes affect the outer skin of the pearl only, so if that dies death is but skin deep, a live pearl remaining beneath it.

As life and death means the segregation of particles into a compact individuality and their final dissolution, pearls like all other things in the restless economy of nature live and die, but the loss of some of its native charms by the gem is not more a sign of death than the rougher cuticle of a weather beaten sailor with which exposure has replaced the smooth skin of the boy.