PEARL CULTIVATION

Evening Star, Issue 20137, 30 March 1929, Page 2

PEARL CULTIVATION

A THRIVING INDESTRV. I —— Bear! milking Ims become tin important industry in Tapan. The Japanese \ pearl maker is not a iiiamilaclurcr after the ta>liiun of the Occidental, who has learned how to blow glass bubbles and fill them with (ish scales to meet (lie demand ol (hose whose ta>if lor pearls is satisfied with such imitations as they can afford. He is a farmer, rather, growing pearls by artificial stimulation on his watery plantation. The Japanese pearl lanner, tin longer leaving the production of these jewels to the natural inclination of the oyster, has learned how. with the assistance of science, he may make the molluscs engage in systematic pearl culture, to his profit. This industry is centred on Hie southeast side of the main island of Japan. Here, almost forty years ago, a one lime pedlar on the streets of Yamnda and Tuba, Kocliichi Mikimoto hy name, launched in a modest way the enterprise that since then has brought to him the title Pearl King.’’ From the small beginning in pearl culture then made on and about a rocky little island in Ago Bay has grown an Industry with many branches, utilising tens i.il thousands of watery acres and employing more than a thousand people. The on tout of these farms is more than a million pearls a year _ not: perfect pearls, yet pearls that scientists have pronounced equal to natural pearls in shape, colour, and lustre. Research has shown thai natural pearls originate from what E known ns the.pearl sac, the cells of ■which secrete the pearly substance, sometimes with, sometimes without, a nucleus. This pearl sac is removed from the living oyster and into it is introduced a fragment ol the shell ol: a (rcsli water mussel to serve as a nucleus. The month of (ho tiny bag is tied and the whole sac is then inserted in-to the subcutaneous tissue of the shell-secreting epidermis of another oyster. The oyster is then returned to the sea.