Part 11

The English Colonial governments of India are doing much in this direction. By keeping experts upon the ground, they have learned how to fish without destroying the beds, and to fish when it is possible for the oysters to contain pearls. Strict supervision and protection of the beds result in more frequent fishings and greater returns to both the government and the fishermen.

This example is being followed, and pearl fisheries are gradually coming either under governmental supervision or into the hands of concessionaires, whose large investment makes the preservation of the beds a business necessity, whether they fish mainly for pearls or shells.

The best pearls and the largest number are found usually in mature shells which are distorted; it has been stated as a possibility, that in the future some of the new rays will be used in fisheries where the pearl is the main object of the fisher, to ascertain if the oyster contains any before destroying it. M. Dubois of Lyons has experimented with Roentgen rays for that purpose.

As the fish is enormously prolific it is more probable however that effort will be directed instead toward the preservation of the mollusk from the enemies and accidents which are occasionally greater than its productiveness.

One of the greatest dangers in Indian waters to a bed of young oysters is a little mollusk known locally in Ceylon as suran (Modiola). These cluster in masses on the sea bottom and spreading over the surface of the coral, crowd out the delicate young of oysters recently deposited.

The Japanese fisheries suffer from the occasional infection of the waters by a weed, dinoflagellata gonyaulax. It accumulates in immense quantities, causing a wide discoloration of the sea water and is very destructive to an oyster-bed. It is called the red current or red tide. So far no preventive or remedy has been found.

Hitherto the most general and fatal danger to oyster-beds has been the ungoverned extravagance of irresponsible fishers who seek to harvest in the present regardless of the future, but these are gradually being made amenable to restrictive laws as authorities awake to the value of the industry. A greater danger which threatens the unio of American streams, is the pollution of the water by the discharge of the refuse of factories and the sewage of cities into them. A mussel bed will recover in time when denuded by fishers, but sewage and poison kills it out entirely.

Although fresh-water pearl-bearing mussels are found in the streams of many countries, only in the United States are they taken in sufficient quantities to make the fishings important as an industry. They are to be found throughout the Mississippi drainage area and in part of that of the St. Lawrence. Few exist on the Pacific coast and those of the Atlantic coast are generally inferior as pearl-mussels. There are many varieties of the unio which yield pearls. Latin names are given by different writers to distinguish them, but as scientists differ in their classifications, the names are not always uniform and are not sufficiently well established to be useful, descriptively, to the general reader. In treating of the various kinds of pearl-bearing unios of the United States therefore in these pages, the common names by which they are known will as a rule be used with the scientific names appended, as revised by the department of mollusks of the United States National Museum.

From the times of Roman colonization until now, pearls have been taken from the mussels of British streams. There are three varieties of pearl-bearing mussels in Great Britain: Painter's mussel (U. pictorum), the Swollen River mussel (U. tumidus) and the Pearl mussel (U. margaritifera).

The first two occur only in the streams and ponds of England and Wales and the pearls found in them are of inferior quality. The latter inhabits the streams of Scotland and the northern counties of England and to some extent are found in Ireland and Wales also. The shell is oblong, rather flat and heavy and about five and one-half inches long. The exterior surface is rough, and blackish-brown; the pearly interior has a tint of flesh color mottled by stains of dull green. It was from this variety the Perthshire Tay pearls were taken, which gained so much notoriety in the middle of the eighteenth century when some fifty thousand dollars worth were sent to London from this stream in three years.

Scotch pearl-fishing was revived in 1860 and some fine ones were sold to Queen Victoria, the Empress of the French, the Duchess of Hamilton and others. Pearl-mussels have been found in Lochs Rannoch, Tay, Lubnaig and Earn, also in the Don, the Leith and other streams. Some are found in the Welsh streams, and the river Bann in Ireland was noted for the fine pearls found in it. Many years ago there was a pearl fishery at Omagh in the north of Ireland. An old writer claims that Cæsar obtained pearls of such bigness in Britain that he tried the weight of them by his hand.

The fishers wade for them in shallow pools, or thrust sticks between the open valves, or drag branches over them, for as soon as anything enters between the two shells they close upon it at once. The mussels are found generally set up in the sand of the river-bed with the open side, if the current is very strong, turned away from it. The custom of the peasantry is to fish for them in the autumn after harvest.

Pearl-mussels are found also in Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Mesopotamia, Lapland, Canada, Labrador, the Hawaiian Island Oahu, Japan (especially the anodonta japonica), China, the United States and Italy, in the Gwaai and Shangani rivers of Southern Rhodesia, South Africa. Nowhere are they found however in such quantities or in so many varieties as in the United States. The number taken from the streams here of late years has been so great that the shells have largely displaced the marine Egyptian and have affected the demand for the better qualities of South Sea mother-of-pearl. The pearls found in them also have been of such quality and quantity that they now have an important place among the jewels of the world.

Old records and the contents of Indian mounds show that the unio was taken from the rivers by the aborigines for the pearls they sometimes contained; but no wide interest in this possible wealth of the rivers appears to have developed among their white successors until the finding in 1857 of a large pearl weighing ninety-three grains at Notch Brook near Paterson, N. J. It was afterwards sold to the Empress Eugénie of France for $2500. This became noised abroad and immediately multitudes began to search for pearls.

Mussels were gathered and destroyed by the million, few pearls being found. The excitement subsided as the searchers learned how few got adequate reward for their time and labor. They soon began to realize that the finding of a pearl of value is usually preceded by the opening of hundreds or thousands of shells containing none, and that in the aggregate, the shells thrown away were worth more than the few pearls found.

Another pearl hunt developed along the Little Miami River in Ohio from the finding of several fine pearls near Waynesville in 1876. This reached its height in 1878. In 1880, pearls began to come into the New York market from the West and South. Immense beds have been fished in the White, Wabash and Ohio Rivers in Indiana. In the summer of 1889 a number of fine pearls were found in the south-western corner of Wisconsin, in Crawford, Grant, Lafayette and Green counties. Not only were they notable for extraordinary luster, but many were of beautiful color. The sale of some at prices which seemed fabulous to the people of that section, when it became generally known, caused such a scramble for them by the natives that the streams were rapidly denuded of mussels, and that section has become of much less importance than others since developed. Prairie du Chien is the center of the Wisconsin market, from which point the shells are distributed to the button factories.

The following year (1890) pearl-bearing mussels were found in several of the central counties of Illinois—McLean, Tazewell and Woodford, in the Mackinaw river and tributaries, but no discovery equalling that of Wisconsin occurred until 1897 when the Arkansas beds were discovered. A peculiarity of this district is that whereas the unio is usually most abundant in swift clear water having a sandy or gravelly bottom, many are found here in the mud.

They have been taken over a wide territory from the rivers and streams of the eastern half of the state, including the Black, White, Cache, St. Francis, Ouachita, Saline and Dorcheat rivers, and in the valley of the Arkansas. Following this were finds in Indian Territory, Missouri, Georgia and Tennessee, the latter being the most prolific. The finest pearls in Tennessee are found in the fluter, or lake shell, which is the same as the mussel known on the Wabash as the wash-board. A yellow shell is found in the Clinch River similar to the mucket of Arkansas, from which pearls are taken.

Unlike the pearl oyster, the unio seems to be more prolific of pearls in the shallows and riffles near the edges of the rivers. Most of the fine pearls are found between the pallial line and the lip in the free portion of the mantle. Those found within the pallial line, where the mantle is attached to the shell, are seldom as lustrous or perfect.

Pearls are found in many States besides those mentioned, but the fishing is done quietly and in some cases the sources of supply are known to only a few who in the marketing of their pearls carefully avoid giving any information. This is particularly true of some of the eastern states. Streams in the Northwestern section of New York State are regularly fished, but without excitement. The large fisheries of the Mississippi and West are fished principally for the mother-of-pearl in the shells. As with some of the marine fisheries, the pearl is regarded as an extra.

The mussels are taken in various ways. In Canada, boats drag brush and the branches of trees over the river bottoms, gathering the mussels into the boat as the twigs become clogged. In the large beds often found in our Western Rivers, fishing is done wherever possible by dredging. Metal scoops, hand, shoulder and scissor-rakes are used and the mollusks, taken in immense quantities are cooked to open them, then cleaned of the meat which is afterwards examined for pearls. This method is used where the mussels lie in great masses or on sandy bottoms. Where there are boulders or large stones, a great number of hooks are dragged over the beds.

The mussels, partially buried, lie lip-end up and the shell slightly parted. Should anything come within this gaping aperture, the mussel at once closes upon it, nipping on with such tenacity that the hold is not loosed until the fisher draws it into the boat and forcibly releases the hook. It is said the mollusk's shell would remain thus tightly closed for ten or twelve hours. After dragging the hooks over the bed, the mussels are taken off and the process repeated.

Various rough devices are used, the principle in all being the same. One, illustrative, consists of a piece of lead pipe or an iron bar several feet long, from which depend a number of double or triple hooks several inches apart. This is dropped overboard, the rope on which it is hung is fastened to the stern of the boat, and the boatman rows over the mussel bed dragging it after him. Men who dredge for the mollusks are called clammers. Pearlers are those who at odd times fish for the mussels with pearls as the main object. This class is composed of the backwoods natives who live about the streams in which the mussels are found. They are people who usually follow their inclinations as nearly as they can, working only as it becomes requisite to obtain the few coarse necessities of their lives. With them also are small farmers who at seasons when farm work is not pressing, seek the excitement and possible profit of the hunt for pearls.

For all such persons the occupation has a great fascination. The difficulties of following the streams through almost impenetrable surroundings, the coarse fare of bacon, meal and coffee; the long tramps back and forth to their mountain huts, or the exposure to night in the tangle of the woods, have no terrors for them; they are but common experiences.

Few pearls of value are found, but the occasional pearl which each one does get, makes expectation tingle, and hope recounts again and again the great finds which others have made. There are curious happenings which illustrate the uncertainties of the work.

It is told on the Clinch river in East Tennessee that a pearler, having patiently fished all day, examining the fish from time to time as little heaps of them were gathered, without finding even a small pearl, finally decided to quit. He was about to examine his last small heap when a man standing by offered him fifty cents for the lot. The offer was accepted. From the first shell opened, the buyer extracted a ball pearl which was afterwards sold for one thousand dollars. Two of the finest pearls taken one season from the same section were obtained from a heel-splitter, carelessly dug out of the sand by a man wading in the shallows of the river. The heel-splitter is a large thin-shelled variety, so named by the natives because of the sharp, cutting quality of the shell which protrudes from the sand of the river. They rarely contain pearls, but when they do, the pearls are usually fine.

The largest proportion of fine pearls to the yield of any section since discoveries have been recorded, came from Wisconsin, and many of the best of these, especially of the fancy colored ones, were taken from Sugar river. Many of these were exceptionally beautiful in both color and luster and a good proportion of them were also round.

Much is written and told of the marvellous pearls found in our streams worth large sums of money. Such pearls are found undoubtedly but not in such quantities as one might think from the enthusiastic reports current in daily papers. Finds are written up by reporters who know nothing of pearls and prefer to write a readable story of wondrous gems and great values to a statement of plain unvarnished facts. In this the news-gatherer is assisted by some simple native with an eye single to a good price and a capacity for exaggerated ideas of value impossible to Maiden Lane.

It is no uncommon trick when buyers are present, to find again, a pearl, which has been to New York and back and the ruse often succeeds. Pearls are frequently sold at the fisheries for much more than they would bring in the east. In fact it is difficult to buy ordinary pearls at a reasonable price. The natives will sometimes sell a really fine pearl for less than it is worth because they do not understand the relative values of quality; but they usually over-estimate pieces of poor quality.

A large majority of those found in our fresh-water mussels fail in some essential quality. Many are chalky, or lustrous at one or two points only. Others are faulty in shape, or if spherical, deeply pitted. Really fine pieces are usually small or button, and when large, are baroques. Some of the latter are magnificent. Weighing fifty to over one hundred grains, with skins of extraordinary luster and iridescence; white, or of a beautiful pink tint, these strawberry or rose pearls, as they are called, frequently excel, by every standard of beauty, the imperfect spheres which command a greater price in the market because they are round.

The most common variety of unio in American rivers, especially in the Mississippi river, is that known as the nigger-head (Quadrula ebena). It is also the principal species used for button-making.

Similar is the warty-back (Quadrula pustulosa) so called because the shell has a number of warts or excrescences on the outside of the valves. The "bull-head" (Pleurobena Aesopus) is found in abundance with the nigger-head. It has a blackish-brown exterior, presenting several radiating ridges, and a white lining. The two latter are inferior as material for buttons as the shells are brittle. The mucket (Lampsilis ligamentinus) is a large shell, average size 4 inches, has a dark brown exterior and cream-white lining. It is too thin and brittle to make first class material for buttons though fine pearls are sometimes found in them.

The sand-shells furnish good material for buttons. They are long, sometimes six inches, and narrow. They are usually found on sandy bottoms and are said to move from the channel toward the shores in the morning and back in the evening. The most abundant is the yellow sand-shell (Lampsilis anodontoides) so called from its bright yellowish brown exterior. Another kind, the black sand-shell (Lampsilis rectus) has a black epidermis. A smaller variety, less abundant now than formerly, is the slough sand-shell (Lampsilis fallaciosus). These are generally found in coves or the mouths of rivulets.

The deer-horn or buckhorn (Tritigonia verrucosa) is a large variety, sometimes attaining a length of nine inches in the Iowa river, though the average in the Mississippi is about five inches. The shell, as the name indicates, has a rough, warty exterior. The supply is small and uncertain.

Another rare species is the butterfly (Plagiola securis). It is a small, flat, thick shell of fine color, and the valves are butterfly in shape with a reddish-brown epidermis striped by darker radiating lines. It is abundant only in the Illinois and Ohio rivers.

The hatchet-back, hackle-back, or heel-splitter (Symphynota complanata), is a large black mussel having a thin sharp-edged shell, one valve-edge projecting. It yields few pearls though fine specimens are occasionally found in this variety.

The blue-point (Quadrula undulata) has a large, thick shell, with ridges on the exterior, curving round the umbones and extending to the edge. Like the black-edge meleagrina, the nacre at the edge is discolored. In this case by a bluish or purplish tint.

Some idea of the enormous quantities of mussels contained in some of these beds in our western rivers may be gained from the reports of the fisheries in the first years of their discovery. Ten thousand tons of shells were taken in three years near New Boston, Ill., from one bed. Reckoned by the usual average this would mean not less than 100,000,000 shells. In some beds, the mussels have been found several feet deep, the bottom layers being dead.

Notwithstanding the enormous numbers, these beds are often completely exhausted in a few seasons. When the beds are first discovered, men will take as much as 1500 to 2000 pounds of shell each, in a day's fishing. In one hundred pounds of shells as they are taken, the average number of valves or half shells will be, nigger-heads, about one thousand; sand-shells, nine hundred; muckets, eight hundred, which would be an average of nine thousand mussels per ton.

The meat in a ton of nigger-heads weighs over three hundred pounds. This is usually removed by the fishermen by boiling the mussels for ten or fifteen minutes in crude sheet iron tanks when the shells open and the fleshy part falls out or may be easily removed by hand. To show how little the pearls they may contain enter into the calculations of these fishermen, it may be stated here that the shell-buyers pay about twenty-five per cent. less for the mussels as taken from the river than they do for the shells when cleaned.

On the Californian coast when the divers worked independently, they preferred to sell the oysters unopened. They received about $4.50 per thousand on an average for the shells and double for the oysters complete.

The fishing season for pearlers is from August to December. The large operations for shell, in the early days of the industry, were confined to the same period, but of late, fishing is carried on throughout the year, immense quantities being taken through the ice. The shells are better in cold weather, being less brittle than when exposed in the boats during warm weather. Fishing through the ice is very wasteful however, as the undersized, which are dropped back from the scoops and rakes in the summer, when thrown out on the ice are allowed to remain there and die.

The price of shells varies considerably from season to season. An average price for nigger-heads is about ten dollars per ton; sand-shells bring about twice as much, muckets half that price, and the other varieties together will average about twenty-five per cent. more than nigger-heads, though among these the deer-horn is worth about four times as much as the nigger-head.

In the first six months of 1898 nearly four thousand tons of mussel shells were sold by mussel fishermen on the Mississippi. They brought about thirty-nine thousand dollars, 94 per cent. of these were nigger-heads.

The spawning time of the unio varies with different species. In the central Mississippi basin it is normally February, March and April for nigger-head, and summer and early fall for the mucket and sand-shell.

The unio is a slow growing animal. Under normal conditions it takes ten years for a nigger-head to reach a size of three inches; fifteen to eighteen years to attain a shell diameter of 4-1/2 inches. This corresponds very closely with the life of the meleagrina, though the shell of the latter ceases to grow in size at about eight or ten years. After that it continues to lay on thickness up to eighteen or twenty years.

Although the discoveries so far in Africa are unimportant, it is possible, now that the unio is known to exist there, that the streams of that wonderful land of precious things may add a companion gem to the vast natural hoards there of the diamond. In two years succeeding his first find, the discoverer secured one hundred and fifty pearls at an average of one pearl to eight hundred shells.

Authorities tell us that the nucleus of a mussel-pearl is usually the larva of a distoma. Nuclei of pearls vary according to the circumstances surrounding the beds of the shell-fish and those circumstances have much to do with the occurrence of the pearl.

PRICE

Value, except in things which are constant and constantly changing hands, is a matter of opinion. Price is the expression of that opinion in money terms. Except in a few staple sizes and qualities, pearls are affected by so many details which determine their value that it is difficult to formulate rules to correspond and establish a base by which all may be judged.

Shape, size, color, luster, and perfection, afford a multiplicity of combinations sufficient to puzzle the judgment of the most expert, and when to this is added the fact that there is no other one like the piece to be valued so as to gauge opinion, there remains but one finality, the agreement between buyer and seller on a price.

Disregarding the fluctuations of price occasioned by temporary influences and the variations arising from local causes, this chapter is intended to give information of the price of pearls in the United States to retail dealers, and an idea of the relative value of different qualities and shapes.