Artificial Pearl

It is possible to produce a film having much of the appearance of mother of pearl at a very trifling cost. For this purpose are required one part nitro cellulose, 7 or 8 parts of 100 per cent alcohol and 21 parts ether. Soluble glass is used as a solvent, 10 parts of this to 90 parts of water being the proportion. A series of interesting experiments in color, brilliancy and consistency are made by adding bisulphite of carbon in the proportion of 25 parts to 100 parts of the solution. Benzine may also be added, with the effect of changing the arrangement of the colors and varying their intensity. — New York Ledger.


Experience

He — Now, darling, I shall go and ask your father for you.
She — He won't give his consent.
He — How do you know?
She — Because four or five have tried it before you. — Detroit Free Press.

Artificial Pearls

1895

MADE OF ANY DESIRED COLOR WITH NATURE'S ASSISTANCE.

The Cultivation of Pearl Oysters and the Manufacture of Gems — The Method Employed by the Chinese — The Clever Art of Peeling Pearls.

Mr. George F. Kunz, the well known gem expert, is the author of a monograph on the subject of pearls. He describes the cultivation of the pearl oyster, which is being carried on with success in the bay of Ago, on the Pacific coast of central Japan. This small sheet of water, three miles long and two miles broad, is always calm and is admirably adapted for the culture of the mollusk. Pearl oysters were originally native there and were found in great quantities. Fishing for them has been carried on for three or four centuries. Owing to overfishing the yield between 1880 and 1885 was greatly diminished.

Fearing that the oysters would become extinct, experiments were made with a view of propagating them artificially. This plan was suggested by the late Admiral Yanagi, president of the Japan Fisheries society. During the breeding season the taking of the shellfish was forbidden, and spat was collected on tiles, stones, logs and ropes, the methods adopted being the same as have been tried successfully with the edible oysters of America and Europe. In this way the yield of pearls has been restored, and the Japanese government contemplates an extension of the industry in other waters.

Before this methods had been found for the production of real pearls by nature's aid. A Frenchman named Bouchon-Brandely has been making interesting experiments in this direction recently. He bored holes in the shells of pearl oysters with a gimlet, introduced through the perforations little balls of glass and stopped the openings with corks. At the end of four weeks the balls were found to be covered with a thin layer of pearl. In six months the layer was sufficiently thick to be permanent. The size of the gem thus manufactured is in proportion to the time that has elapsed. Of course it has a limit, inasmuch as the mollusk will not deposit nacre indefinitely, the only purpose of the nacre being to protect the oyster from irritation by the intruding object.

Pearls can be made of various colors by a very simple process. Each mollusk deposits its own sort of nacre. The nacre of the pearl bearing, fresh water mussel called the unio is pink. Pearl oysters produce black pearls, gray pearls or pearls of pure white, according to the part of the animal where the nucleus makes its lodgment.

At the Smithsonian institution in Washington is exhibited an artificial pearl as big as a pigeon's egg and of an exquisite pink color. It is formed about a pellet of beeswax, which was placed for the purpose in the shell of a living unio. Recent experiments made by the fish commission show that marine mollusks can be kept admirably in aquariums. Thus there seems to be no reason why every one should not maintain his own pearl fishery on a small scale, collecting the crop at suitable intervals.

The Chinese have been most successful in producing artificial pearls. The business constitutes an important industry. It is confined to two villages in the northern part of the province of Chih-Kiang. In the months of May and June large quantities of mussels are brought in baskets from a lake 30 miles distant, and the biggest of them are selected for the operation that is to be performed. Into the shell of each mollusk are introduced small objects which it is intended the bivalve shall coat with the pearly substance it secretes. Sometimes little balls of earth are used. Such pellets are made of mud from the bottom of water courses, dried and powdered with the juice of the seeds of the camphor tree.

To place these nuclei inside of the mussels is a process of no little difficulty. The shell is opened with a small instrument of mother of pearl, the mantle of the animal is gently lifted, and the pellets are laid beneath the mantle. The shell is then permitted to close. Finally the mollusks are deposited in canals or pools. They are placed five to six inches apart at depths of from two to five feet in lots of 5,000 to 50,000. In November they are lifted and opened. The animals are removed from the shells and the pellets detached with a sharp knife. By this time they are fastened tightly to the inner surface of the shells and have become covered with a coating of nacre. Next a little hole is cut in each pearl at the point where it has been attached to the shell of the mussel. Through this opening the earth which composed the nucleus is removed. The hollow pearl is then filled with melted yellow rosin, and the orifice is artfully covered with a piece of mother of pearl.

The pearls thus formed are flat on the bottom and in shape are somewhat more than hemispheres. They have much of the luster and beauty of the real gems and are sold so cheaply as to be procurable by all who care to possess them. They are employed to a considerable extent by jewelers, who set them in tiaras and various ornaments for women.

Parisian jewelers are very clever in the art of "peeling" pearls. They will take a pearl that is not pretty at all and remove its outer coat, revealing a beautiful gem within. A pearl is composed of alternate layers of nacre and animal tissue, and the process of peeling is very difficult. The tools employed are a sharp knife, various sorts of files, pearl powder and a piece of leather. The pearly coats are extremely hard and must be cut off piece by piece, the operator relying more on the sense of touch conveyed by the blade of the knife than on the sense of sight.

Pearls found imbedded in the mother of pearl of the oyster shell are made marketable by skillful treatment with acids. Experts know how to make pearls of any color black in a bath of nitrate of silver, and by other chemical means they can turn them to rose color, lilac or gray. Pearls of these unusual tints bring fancy prices.

A few years ago a pearlshop purchased an old gold brooch in a small German town for $20. In the center of it was what looked like a spherical piece of hematite, which is an ore of iron. On examination it proved to be a superb black pearl weighing 77 grains. The outer coat had become faded by sunlight, but when it was removed one of the most beautiful gems of this kind known in modern times was exposed to view. It was a lustrous black and was said to be worth $10,000. Perfectly round pearls over 25 grains in weight are scarce and fetch huge prices, being sought after to form the centers of necklaces.


Brazilian Cuisine

The flesh of the boa constrictor is eaten by the aborigines of Brazil.

Making Artificial Pearls

1907

What a Little Silver Fish Taught a French Beadmaker

"I'll tell you," said a jeweler, "how the wonderfully perfect artificial pearl came to be invented.

"A rich French beadmaker, Molse Jaquin — he lived in the seventeenth century — found a pond in his garden covered one morning with a lovely silvery luster. Amazed, he called his gardener, who said it was nothing — some albettes had got crushed; that was all.

"Albettes were little silver fish, bleaks the Leuciscus alournus. The gardener explained that if you crushed them they always gave the water a pearly sheen like that. Jaquin put on his thinking cap.

"For six years he worked with beads and bleaks, wasting millions of both, but finally he achieved success. He learned how to extract the pearly luster from the bleaks' scales and to cover a glass bead with it.

"What he did — and his method is still used — was to scrape the scales from the fish, wash and rub them and save the water. The water, decanted, gave off a lustrous fluid of the thickness of oil, a veritable pearl paint, a magic fluid that imparts a lovely pearly sheen to everything it is applied to.

"It takes 1,000 bleaks to yield an ounce of this pearl paint. — New Orleans Times-Democrat.

A New Fish Discovered

1896

Scientists are startled when they find a new fish weighing twenty pounds. On September 18, 1896, while fishing on the banks some twenty-eight miles southwest of Cape Flattery, in the schooner Wenoma, Captain Jacobson caught a strange and uncommonly beautiful fish in eighty-five fathoms of water. The fish is twenty-six aid a half inches long, seventeen inches deep and about four inches thick. It weighs twenty pounds, and in high coloring surpasses nearly every other fish of the ocean. The top of the head is a brick red, the back is a metallic blue, shading to an aluminum color on the under side. The mesial line is strongly arched and marked by a series of large scales. The whole fish is covered with pure white round spots. The fins are strongly spined and extend nearly the whole length of the fish. The long spine of the dorsal is ten inches in length. The tail is lunate. The color of the fins is bright vermilion, edged with sulphur yellow. The month is small and toothless, the lower lip protruding and of a vermilion color. The eyes are large and round.

None of the books on fishes in the libraries of the University of Washington or the Young Naturalists' Society give any description of this new visitor of the finny tribes. — Seattle (Wash.) Post-Intelligencer.


Indiana, 1896

Found a Pearl in the Creek

B. T. Howland, a farmer living near Evansville, Ind. found a pearl a few days ago in the creek below the mill at Afton. He sold the gem to a man living at Brodhead for $350. The buyer had the gem appraised by experts and now values it at $1500. No suggestion as to how the pearl might have got in the mill stream is offered. — Buffalo Express.

The Pearl Mosque of Agra, India

1878

A traveler in India describes one of the architectural wonders of the country as follows:

The Pearl Mosque of Agra stands inside the fort, and its three domes rise above the crenelated wall so as to be visible at considerable distances. They have been compared to bubbles, which have rested there for a moment and were liable to be blown away by the first breath of wind, and certainly the comparison is not inapt.

Domes, roofs, walls, pillars, floors, and all are of white marble, and the whole work is finished as carefully as if intended for observation under a microscope. It is not a closed building, like the mosques familiar to visitors to Constantinople. One side is quite open to a large quadrangle, and as you stand in the latter, with the sun of India beating down upon you, your eyes can penetrate to the depths of all the arches that support the domes and roof.

Never, before have I seen a more perfect specimen of the Saracenic arch, and as the arches cut each other at right angles the perspective from any given point is absolutely bewildering. There are twenty four intersecting arches and groined vaults; the structure surprises you at first by its plainness, and then by the splendor of its effect. You cannot understand why it has so captivated you, and I think that many visitors to the Pearl Mosque have gone away with a higher appreciation of Saracenic architecture than ever before.

There is nothing of decoration or ornament about it; nothing but the purest Saracenic art, whether in the mosque itself or in the cloister-surrounded quadrangle. There is no trickery of many-colored stones or elaborate work in mosaic; you see only the pure marble beneath, around, and before you and the blue sky above. As a triumph of architecture it is complete.