Pearl ash

“ Wood is burned in pits and the resulting ash spread on a stone floor, sprinkled with water, and worked till it is damp, frequently with the addition of a little lime. The damp ash is then placed in casks containing false bottoms, covered with straw and hot water poured over them. ”

“ American fresh-water pearls have had many prejudices to overcome, often because of the natural indifference in regard to anything that is found at home or is easily obtainable. It has been said that, in comparison with foreign pearls, they had less specific gravity; that they were not so hard, and that their luster was not as good. It is certain, however, that the skin is generally smooth, and although they may not have so peculiar an orient, their brilliancy equals that of any known pearls. Sometimes they are translucent and either pink or of a faintly bluish tint, like molten silver. ”

“ Through their composition of carbonate of lime, pearls possibly possess some slight therapeutic value, which, however, can easily be supplied by other materials—as the shell, for instance—and is entirely out of proportion to their market value as ornaments.
Although pearls have lost their therapeutic prestige and no longer have a recognized place in materia medica, their healing qualities are not to be denied, for there are few ills to which women are subject that cannot be bettered or at least endured with greater patience when the sufferer receives a gift of pearls ”

“ Seed-pearls is a name given to pearls that are round or irregular, and weigh one fourth grain or even less. They are frequently so small that 18,000 are contained in a single ounce, and they are often sent from the East in bunches of about a dozen or so of strings.
Dust-pearls. When seed-pearls are very small they are known as “dust-pearls”; they are really as fine as dust and have very little value; still, their form is in many cases wonderfully perfect. ”

“ Nevertheless, even if pearls were cultivated as they should be, and people cared for the mollusks as the oyster-gatherer does for his crop—by planting it, guarding it and gathering it systematically—still, the ever-increasing demand would more than balance the greater supply. As we have said, at no time since pearls were worn have they enjoyed such favor; and while they have always increased in value, this increase has never been so rapid as in the past ten years. They are jewels which can be worn by young or old, and which adapt themselves to every fabric that man or woman can use for attire ”

“ Although pearls are principally calcium carbonate, they also contain small amounts of an organic substance, called conchiolin, and water. Pearls are found in shellfish that live in either fresh or salt water. Few pearls are spherical in shape; most are rounded but somewhat irregular 25 and are known as baroque pearls. Good quality pearls are the only gemstone commonly sold by the grain, a unit of weight equal to 0.25 carat or 0.05 gram. The pearl grain is not the same unit of weight as the Troy grain. ”

“ Dredging is now quite common and is doing much to deplete the mussel-beds of the west. When one bed is completely divested of shells, the clammer moves on to another and repeats the process, so that the supply of fresh-water pearls is coming to depend on the constant discovery of new mussel-beds. Unless legislation regulates the industry the American supply will soon cease.
The cheapest fresh-water pearls in the market to-day are the finest. The pearlers along the streams of the west and south will no longer part with the pearls they find to the speculators at the old time prices. ”

“ They are generally green, blue-green, or fawn-yellow, and have an intense red, flame-like iridescence. They are rarely round, generally flat, or irregular, and are occasionally worth several hundreds of dollars each.
“Pinna pearls”: those pearls that are found in the Pinna, or wing-shells of the Mediterranean and adjacent seas. These possess no orient, but are more highly crystalline than any other pearls. They are almost translucent and have a peculiar red or yellow color, and are of little value except locally. ”

“ The pearls are generally found embedded in the flesh of the mollusk; quite often they are in a sac or cyst with an external opening, from which they are sometimes dislodged by the muscular movement of the 280animal. The yield is small, a thousand shells in many cases yielding only a very small number of seed-pearls or perhaps none at all. Most of them are oval, commonly somewhat elongated. The usual size is about one grain in weight, but some of them weigh over twenty, and a very few exceed fifty grains each. ”

“ Pearls are yet found in the river mussels in all parts of eastern Asia, from Siberia to the Indian Ocean, and from the Himalayas to the Pacific. It is represented that they are not from the Unio margaritifera, the common river-mussel of Europe, but from other species, such as Unio mongolicus, U. dahuricus, Dipsas plicatus, etc. It is quite impossible to obtain a reliable estimate of the total number of persons employed, or the output of pearls in China, but these items are certainly very much larger than the average Occidental believes. ”

“ A single mollusk may contain several small pearls,—more than one hundred have been found,—but in such cases usually none has commercial value. Ordinarily only one is found in the examination of very many shells. Of these objects it may be truthfully said that “many are found, but few are chosen,” few that are of first quality or are worthy of a fine necklace. In many instances, several pounds of cheap pearls would be gladly exchanged for a choice gem weighing an equal number of grains. ”

“ On the whole coast of this province, for two hundred leagues, there are many vast beds of oysters which breed pearls, as has been found in divers places. But, which is very remarkable, far from the sea, in fresh water rivers and lakes, there is a sort of shell-fish between a mussel and a , wherein are found abundance of pearls, and many of an unusual magnitude. The Indians, when they take the oysters, broil them over the fire till they are fit to eat, keeping the large pearls they find in them, which by the heat are tarnished and lose their native lustre ”

“ Carl von Linné, the great Swedish naturalist and botanist, discovered that pearls could be grown by opening the shell of the oyster and slipping a small bead of lead or wax inside the shell and then putting the oyster back in his bed for three or four years. Acting upon that idea, the Chinese and Japanese people have established great pearl raising industries and turn out a large amount of pearls every year. They are very pretty, and of good color, but being flat on one side they cannot be made into necklaces. In several of our states the fresh water clams are pearl bearers ”

“ 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 [317] extent by the acidity of the excretions of the human skin, sufficiently in some cases to destroy, or at any rate dim, their luster. ”

“ All imitation pearls made of some solid material are heavier than the genuine and lack the pearly characteristics of the fine imitations even. If made of solid glass without acid finish, they are shiny and too poor to require a second consideration, if acid finished they have a "ground-glass" appearance which is unmistakable. If made of other material of a vitreous nature, they are heavier than pearls, dull in luster or without luster, dark in color and unmistakably lacking in pearly characteristics. The only dangerous imitations are the Japan culture pearls and the hollow, glass bead-pearls. ”

“ They are rarely, if ever, spherical, and only the upper surface is lustrous; consequently they serve only the purpose of half-pearls. A cross section shows the nacreous growth in a thin concentric layer, forming a fragile hemispherical cap, the concave wall of which is covered with a brownish granular secretion which prevents perfect adhesion. Compared with choice pearls, they are not only deficient in luster, but are fragile, and are beautiful only on the upper surface, and not available for necklaces. 293Good specimens sell for several dollars each, and some individuals reach $50 or more. ”

“ The oysters of some reefs are comparatively rich in certain years; while in other seasons or on other reefs the mollusks may be numerous but yield very few pearls.
The second species of importance in the Red Sea is similar to the Lingah oyster and is known to the Arabs as “bulbul.” This is much smaller than the “sadof,” averaging less than three inches in diameter. It is collected for the pearls exclusively, the shells being too small for industrial use; but only 3 or 4 per cent. of the individuals yield pearls. ”

“ Small and irregular pearls are not at all uncommon, but choice ones are decidedly scarce, and each one represents the destruction of tens of thousands of mollusks. Quantities of irregular and imperfect nodules known as slugs are collected, which sell for only a few dollars per ounce. In some sections of the Mississippi, the slugs are so very numerous that their aggregate value exceeds that of the choice pearls. ”

“ As a rule the fresh-water pearls do not rank so high in value as those from oriental seas, since ordinarily they are not so lustrous. However, some of them have sold at very high figures. A round pearl weighing 103 grains, found in Black River, Arkansas, in 1904, was eventually sold for $25,000; and one of 68 grains, found, in 1907, on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River, was recently marketed at $15,000.
One of the largest American pearl necklaces, brought together in 1904, consisted of thirty-eight pearls weighing 1710 grains in the aggregate, an average of 45 grains for each pearl. ”

“ These pearls he considers to be worth half the price of good round pearls; that is to say, 21⁄2 lire (about $.50) per carat for four weighing together one carat. Where there are as many as three thousand of these “perle dolce” in an ounce, the 21⁄2 lire base is multiplied by 576, the number of grains given to the ounce; this makes the value of an ounce of one-grain pearls $288. This amount is then divided by 3000, and the quotient, $.096, represents the value of one carat of these small pearls. Multiplying this by 144 we obtain, as the value of an ounce of such pearls, $13.82. ”

“ In 1727, Kaempfer wrote that pearls, called by the Japanese kainotamma or shell jewels, were found in oysters and other mollusks almost everywhere about Saikokf. Every person was at liberty to fish for them. Formerly the natives had little or no value for them, till they learned of their estimation by the Chinese, who were ready to pay good prices for them, their women being very proud of wearing necklaces and other ornaments of pearls. “The largest and finest pearls are found in the small sort of oysters, called akoja, which is not unlike the Persian pearl-oyster. ”

“ This, however, is a very delicate operation, and at the pearling grounds is only resorted to by men of experience. The composition of the pearl is carbonate of lime, with a small proportion of organic matter, and the specific gravity 2.5 to 2.7.
The pearl is affected by acids, and is easily calcined on exposure to heat.
In color, the pure white, slightly transparent, is the most highly prized; while in India and China the bright yellow colors are sought after. ”

“ The ancient Chinese believed that pearls originated in the brain of a dragon. We now know, of course, that pearl is created by a secretion of a mollusk. Very few mollusks have the ability to produce the fine mother-of-pearl used in the jewelry trade, and even among those that can, very few produce pearls with iridescence, or orient, as it is known in the trade. Only two genera, the pearl oyster (Margaritifera) and the pearl mussel (Unio) are important sources of the gem. Edible 32 oysters rarely produce pearls, and when they do, the pearls are of poor quality. ”

“ The demand for pearls has been so great, and the enhancement of value so rapid, that the greatest ingenuity has been employed in presenting the best part of the gems to view, as well as in many other ways. The result is that when pearls are to be used as borders or as a gallery on a comb or brooch, they are pierced in such a way that only the best side shall be outward, so that the general effect produced is that of a perfect row of pearls ”

“ In Western Australia the percentage of yield is much larger than this.
The third species, Margaritifera carcharium, is confined almost entirely to the limits of Sharks Bay, on the extreme western coast of Australia. At maturity it is the smallest of the three, averaging three or four inches in diameter, and about equals in size the Lingah pearl-oyster of the Persian Gulf. The percentage of pearls therefrom is relatively greater than from the larger variety; but, owing to its small size and lack of thickness, the shell is of little commercial value. ”

“ The pearl is nothing but a nacreous formation, deposited in a globular form, either adhering to the oyster shell, or buried in the folds of the creature. On the shell it is fast; in the flesh it is loose; but always has for a kernel a small, hard substance, maybe a barren egg, maybe a grain of sand, around which the pearly matter deposits itself year after year successively, and by thin concentric layers."
"Are many pearls found in the same oyster?" asked Conseil. ”