NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXLV. FEBRUARY, 1879.-VOL. LVIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

ferred, for in nothing does God so much de- | tration with its adherent pearl. It is somelight Himself as in the tenderness and lustre of virtue born of trouble and repentance." There is, indeed, in "the tenderness and lustre" of the pearl, and the fact that it is "a product of life," a suggestiveness and character which render it available to sacred writers of all religions.

times quite large, from eight to ten inches in diameter, though commonly about four. The outside of the shell is rough and variegated in structure. A glimpse of it sufficient to give an idea of this may be had, as it lies partly beneath the others in the foreground. The body of the oyster is unfit for There is but one pearl, a gem worthy of food-an illustration of the universality of the name, the true Oriental pearl, which the law of compensation-but the shell itpossesses the peculiar diaphanous lustre self, in addition to "bearing its royal gift technically called "water," though many of pearls," furnishes the valuable nacre, or shells produce so-called pearls, some of them mother-of-pearl, so largely used in the arts. of considerable value. The shell which The history of this gem has already been produces the translucent pearl is thick, so fully and ably treated in this Magazine, and of an imperfect oval or nearly circular to which we respectfully refer the reader, shape, as seen in the accompanying illus-that we pass on to the pinna, or wing-shell,

which is seen in the illustra-
tion overlapping the Melea-
grina margaritifera, or pearl-
oyster shell, that produces
beautiful pink accretions of
nacre, and which happen
now to be very fashionable
as gems.
One most remark-
able circumstance connect-
ed with this shell is that it
actually produces silk, from
which gloves and other arti-
cles of a fine texture, silken
lustre, and handsome brown
color are manufactured. This
fabric is woven from the thick
rope of silky fibres, called the
byssus, or beard, by which the
shell is moored to the bottom
of the sea when it is found.
The shell containing on

one valve a collection of strange-looking little figures, and on the other a string of pearls, the original of which is at the British Museum, is a species of mussel found in Chinese waters. This fact explains at once the existence and growth of pearls. In the one case small metal images are carefully inserted between the mantle and shells of full-grown mussels taken one by one from their natural beds; these foreign substances, imbedded in the soft muscular substance of the living animal, become in time completely incrusted with a thin coating of nacre, and appear as though they were the natural products of the shell, which by this living miracle in producing his images is supposed to attest the existence of the god. To furnish the other valve, which the reader will perceive contains a chaplet of pearls, the ingenious Mongolians have recourse to a variety of methods. One is by taking a portion of the shell itself, shaped into a spherical globule, and inserting it at a spot where the shell has been carefully scraped away. The failure of some experiments of this sort in the common fresh-water mussel of our own waters is probably owing to the fact that the shell was left unscraped, and buttons of mother-of-pearl merely placed upon the animal in the open shell.

A year generally suffices to cover these nuclei with a thin but perfect envelope of nacre, but each year, by adding a new coat, renders the pearl more perfect.

Another method is by piercing the shell | These having received an even and perfect with bits of silver wire, by which means ad- incrustation on their inner surfaces, are fillherent pearls are formed. Not only, how-ed with a mucilage of fine gum-arabic, and ever, are the processes of nature followed having been perforated with a needle and and natural pearls produced by artificial threaded on a string, are ready for sale. For means, but pearls are now manufactured on one ounce of the lustrous material used in a large scale without the aid of any shell- coating the inside of the shells, no less than fish whatever. About two hundred and a thousand fish are required. Fortunately twenty-two years ago Moïse M. Jaquin, a this kind of fish is very abundant, or there citizen of Paris, a bead-manufacturer, one of might have been some probability that the those inventive geniuses who are not above bleak, becoming extinct as a fish, would only taking a hint or suggestion from the most continue to exist in the form of artificial casual circumstance, happened to be walk-pearls. ing in the garden of his country-house near The remaining shell in the illustration is Paris, when his attention was attracted by a representation of our common river musa remarkable silvery lustre on a basin of wa-sel, from which from time to time really ter. We can imagine M. Jaquin at once all valuable pearls are taken. A friend of mine interest and attention at what almost any found a beautiful pink-coral-colored gem in other man would pass, and which undoubt- one of these shells on the banks of the Tenedly thousands on thousands had passed, nessee River. without giving the matter a thought. "Ah, ciel!" murmurs the Frenchman, "if I could but give my beads such a lustre! Pray what has produced this effect upon the basin of water?"

The old servant, who has regarded the sudden interest displayed in such a trifle, we can well imagine, with some contempt as well as surprise, answers his master, speaking for the whole world: "Master, it is but the fish; some ablettes happened to be crushed in the water; it is nothing."

In the world under the waters are lovely flowers of every hue, instinct with life and passion, which brighten with pleasure and pale with pain, which wave about on long stems in the shifting currents, as earthly flowers do to the varying zephyrs, or sit in conscious beauty thick clustered on a roughribbed branch of coral, or, breaking from their parent stems by a strange metabasis unknown to the vegetable analogues, become wanderers and vagabonds for the rest of their lives. Among these submarine flowers none show a rarer beauty or greater brilliancy than the coral polyps. The tenderest and most subtle grays, the most sug

Nothing! yes, nothing to the stupid servant, nothing to the rest of the world; but to a practical inventive genius like that of M. Jaquin it is a discovery, it is a fortune, itgestive and softest carnations, and royal puris an opening up of a new branch of commerce that feeds, clothes, and supports whole communities, and keeps them busy.

ple, robe these little polypidoms-" daughters of the sea"*-creatures that were, until a hundred and fifty years ago, universally believed to be marine flowers and trees.

Strange flowers and trees, stalks and branches covered with bark, from which proceed buds that open into flowers, and bear seeds that reproduce the coral; but the stalks, instead of being herbaceous or woody like those of vegetables, are horny or calcareous; the buds and flowers, endowed with animal life and intelligence, are sensitive and perceptive beings; the petals, opening out into rosettes, are so many arms, feelers, or tentacles that move about in search of food, which seizing upon, they convey to their common axis or centre, where is placed the mouth, and devour. This animated corolla opens and shuts alternately, and on the slightest hint of danger withdraws itself into itself, until nothing but an inconspicuous little gray knob can be seen where but an instant before all was life, color, and motion.

M. Jaquin saw that the lustrous sheen he so much admired was indeed produced by the countless scales of the little fish called the bleak-Leuciscus alburnus. He at once began experimenting. The scales he dried and reduced to powder, and this he used as an enamel, with which small beads of wax alabaster were coated externally. These, though beautiful, were unsatisfactory, and he soon began to use hollow glass beads. He now took the scales of the fish, thoroughly washed and rubbed them successively several times. The different portions of water used in these washings he suffered to settle. The water being carefully drawn off by siphons, our pearl-maker found a lustrous matter of the consistency of oil remaining at the bottom. This substance is called by the French "essence d'Orient," or essence of pearl. Our pearl-maker, after sundry ineffectual attempts to preserve it from soon becoming putrid, at last succeeded Much has been said in praise of these litby keeping it in volatile alkali. The fur-tle creatures in respect to their unceasing ther process of pearl-making consists in blowing this essence of pearl, combined with melted isinglass, into hollow beads made of a peculiar kind of fine glass of a bluish tint.

industry, and coral reefs are actually spok

Kopárov, from Kópη, a daughter, and aλós, the sea. Latinized, the word becomes curalium, and hence our | word coral.

en of as having been built by coral insects for habitations, as hives are constructed by bees, or houses by masons. The fact is that no more inactive creature exists than the mature coral polyp, rooted as it is to one spot for the whole period of its existence, and only living to eat and reproduce its kind. I say "mature coral polyp," for naturalists tell us that the larvæ, which resemble whitish semitransparent worms, swim in all directions with the greatest activity, always swimming with their thicker extremity in advance, carrying their mouths in the rear, so that they butt against any thing that happens to be in their way. The fact that the thicker extremity becomes in time the base of the polyp, and that it has a tendency to adhere to any object it encounters, soon transforms the free-swimming larva into a fixed polyp, which in turn deposits coral and sends out new colonies.