Real and Artificial

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 54, 25 July 1930, Page 39

Real and Artificial

Facts About Pearls T is well known that pearls if not constantly worn, and if shut away from light and sunshine lose their charm and beauty, become, in fact, what éxperts call "sick." The first wife of the present Duke of Westminster wore her famous pearls.day and night, until one sultry evenin# she discarded © them and left them on the dressing- — table. The gardener, decking out the bedroom. balcony with: flowers. éatly | next) morning, evidently knowing a good 'thing when he saw it, stole them. Little goed they did him, however, for — he was unable to dispose of: them, and was obliged to bury them on a sub-_ urban common. Should you chance at any time te see a row of sick-looking pearls at a reasonable price; and you have anything of the gambler. in your make-up, you might de worse than to buy them. Bathed in sea-water, and given liberal doses of spnshine, such pearls often grow well again. and become of fabulous value. A pearl is really built up of I¢yer on layer of carbonate of lime, skin on skin,. Just like the layers of the so much more hotnely onion. One of the best ways to tell a real pearl from an artificial one is to test it with the teeth. If the pear! is smooth to the teeth, it is imitation; if it is gritty, it is the product of Nature. The wonde&ful iridescence is caused by the light playing on the thin layers of nacre of which the gem is built. Some pearls are due to a tiny parasitic worm attacking the oyste which, in sélf-defehce, wraps the worm in slime that duly hardens into nacre... Once the worm is imprisoned the oyster goes on adding coat after coat until ih the course of years a pearl is formed. The parasite, however, is not always the cayse of pearls in oysters. A grain of sand, a particle of mud, a bit of Spoiige, a piécé of seaweed, 4 scrap of . Shell-all these are séme of the things that have been found in pearly and adjudged to be the cause of them, The beautiful blister péarls, so much used for pendants and rings, are teally half-pearls, that the oyster has built round some foreign substance that has sought to invadé thé shell. LONG .280, when the pearl fisheries of Japan were being ovey-fished and in danger of being wiped out, Mr. K. Mikimoto, member of th. House of Loris in Japan and a scientist, endeavoured ‘to breed and rear "tame" oysters, that would also be pearl-prodte-ing, Countless experiments were conducted, but after many failures came the most brilliant idea of all. It was to introduce a seed pearl or a grain of mother-o’-peatl into a covering of the _méntle of an oyster ar’. then insert : this bodily, or so to speak, graft it, into the incision made in the mantle of another oyster. It meant sacrificing the life of one oyster to render another \

anaummaasant rs " pearl-producing. First of all, only blister pearls were produced, but after twenty years experimenting, a free pearl was foynd that contained the nucleys inserted many years before. — To-day, a vast organisation exploits this idea. Millions of oysters are cultivated and grown on thousands’ of acres of sea-bed; miles of coast, are leased for the purpose in the neighpbourhood of Ago Bay, Omura Bay, and other: places. At three years old, they are operated on by carefully-trained men, and stich skill and delicacy are réquired to place the nucleus between the stomach and kidney of the pearl that no more than fifty oysters can be dealt with in a day by one man. In spite of this, and the enormous expense entailed, if thtee oysters in a hundred contained a free pearl seven to nine years after the operation, the crop of pearls was about fifteen times greater than from "wild" oysters. Now, owijig ta improved methods, the crop of pearls has been increased to twentyfive in a hundred, but if a pearl fisher finds even one first quality pearl in 500 oysters, he considers himself. fortunate, A year after each oyster is opetated upon, it is examined under X-rays, and if a failure is, of course, at once discarded. Consequently, today the pearl grower knows fairly. accurately what the season’s crop of pearls will be. . 7