CONCERNING PEARLS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 696, 19 August 1914, Page 7

CONCERNING PEARLS.

Conversing recently with a repre sentative Parisian jeweller, I was told that it is well- known that brilliancy of pearls is increased by wearing them. It has also been discovered that certain persons bavc the very contrary effect on pra:ls. Their skin seems to contain certain properties which have the eflect oi dulling* or deadening a pearl, an:! causing it to lose its brilliancy altogether. Ladies, therefore, who give their pearls to others to wear must be sure that those persons are perfectly healthy. People vho ha'c undergone certain treatmen's or taken certain remedies are imOt to wear pearls next their skin. If. therefore, some persons have a 1 a'l effect on pearls, others may have a good effect. But in gtnoral it i; absurd to believe that pearls die. There is no such thing r.s a sran oi' life in pearls. They arc, in fa:t, immortal ; and if at any time their lustre is diminished it can be revived by proper treatment or bv being; simply worn for a day or two. That pearls retain ikeir amd, as it were, their viaMty, iaieGnitely is proved by the fa:t that most of the finest and largest Oriental pearls now on the market arc obtained from East India an 1 China, where they have been in the possession of native princes . or. Chinese mandarins. These peails have l:e n \vo;n by five or six generation;, some are 200 or 300 years old. Tlui. lustre is as bright to.day as ever. En fact, they are preferred to perfectly new pearls. The pearls now obtained arc becoming smaller and smaller, and the price of°small pearls,' which some years ago would scarcely have been bought, has .gone up prodigiously m'-il th2y cost almost as much as larger pearls. But whether small or largj, the Oriental pearl never loses its beautiful lustre if properly treated. Wearing them next the s!;in certainly improves them, not, perhaps, through any magic process, but simply from the natural warmth ot the body added to the friction iaused by the wear.—Paris Corresponlent of the "Telegraph."