and sometimes a small speck is seen in the middle, upon which the coats were originally formed.

All oysters, and most shell-fish, are found to contain pearls; but that which particularly obtains the name of the pearl oyster, has a large strong whitish shell wrinkled and rough without, and within smooth and of a silver colour. From these the mother-ofpearl is taken, which is nothing more than the internal coats of the shell, resembling the pearl in colour and consistence. This is taken out and shaped into that variety of utensils which are found so beautiful; but the pearl itself is chiefly prized, being found but in few oysters, and generally adhering, sometimes making a print in the body of the shell, sometimes at large within the substance of the fish.

There are a great number of pearl fisheries in America and Asia; but as pearls bear a worse price than formerly, those of America are in a great measure discontinued. The most famous of all the Asiatic fisheries is in the Persain Gulf, near the Isle of Bahren. There is another between the coast of Madura and the Island of Ceylon; and there was a third on the coasts of Japan; but as these noble islanders have a contempt for jewels, and an abhorrence for such Europeans as come in pursuit of them, that fishery, which is thought to be the most valuable of all others, is discontinued. The diving business is now carried on only in those countries where the wretchedness of one part of mankind goes to support the magnificence of the other.

The chief fishery, as was said, is carried on in the Persian Gulf, and the most valuable pearls are brought from thence. The value of these jewels increases, not only in proportion to their size, but also their figure and colour; for some pearls are white, others are yellowish, others of a lead colour; and some affirm they have been found as black as

jet. What it is that gives these different tinctures to pearls, is not known; Taverner ascribes it to their lying two or three weeks upon shore after the oyster is taken; Reaumur thinks it proceeds from the colour of that part of the fish's body upon which the pearl lies. It is most probable that this colour proceeds, like the spots frequently found on the internal surface of the shell itself, from some accident while the pearl is growing.

The best coloured pearls and the roundest are brought from the East; those of America are neither so white nor so exactly oval. All pearls, however, in time become yellow; they may be considered as an animal substance converted into a stony hardness, and, like ivory, taking a tincture from the air. They have been even found to decay when in damp or vaulted places, and to moulder into a substance scarce harder than chalk. When the daughters of Stilicon, who were both betrothed, one after the other, to the emperor Honorius, were buried, much of their finery was also deposited with them in the same tomb. In this manner they remained buried for above eleven hundred years, till the foundations of the church of St. Peter were laying, Their tomb was then discovered, and all their finery was found in tolerable preservation except their pearls, which were converted by time and damps into a chalky powder.

The wretched people that are destined to fish for pearls, are either Negroes or some of the poorest of the natives of Persia. The inhabitants of this country are divided into tyrants and slaves: The divers are not only subject to the dangers of the deep, to tempests, to suffocation at the bottom, to being devoured by sharks, but from their profession universally labour under a spitting of blood, occasioned by the pressure of air upon their lungs in going down

to the bottom. The most robust and healthy young men are chosen for this employment, but they seldom survive it above five or six years. Their fibres become rigid, their eye-balls turn red, and they usually die consumptive.

It is amazing how very long they are seen to continue at the bottom. Some, as we are assured, have been known to continue three quarters of an hour under water without breathing; and to one unused to diving, ten minutes would suffocate the strongest. Whether from some effort the blood bursts the old passage which it had in the foetus, and circulates without going through the lungs, it is not easy to tell; but certain it is, that some bodies have been dissected with this canal of communication open, and these extraordinary divers may be internally formed in that manner.

Be this as it may, no way of life seems so laborious, so dangerous, or so painful. They fish for pearls, or rather the oysters that contain them, in boats twenty-eight feet long; and of these there are sometimes three or four hundred at a time, with each seven or eight stones, which serve for anchors. There are from five to eight divers belonging to each, that dive one after another. They are quite naked, except that they have a net hanging down from the neck to put their oysters in, and gloves on their hands to defend them while they pick the oysters from the holes in the rocks; for in this manner alone can they be gathered. Every diver is sunk by means of a stone, weighing fifty pounds, tied to the rope by which he descends. He places his foot in a kind of stirrup, and laying hold of the rope with his left hand, with his right he stops his nose to keep in his breath, as upon going down he takes in a very long inspiration. They are no sooner come to the bottom, but they give the signal to those who are in

the boat to draw up the stone; which done, they go to work, filling their net as fast as they can; and then giving another signal, the boats above pull up the net loaded with oysters, and shortly after the diver himself, to take a new inspiration. They dive to the depth of fifteen fathoms, and seldom go deeper. They generally go every morning by break of day to this fatiguing employment, taking the land-wind to waft them out to sea, and returning with the seabreeze at night. The owners of the boats usually hire the divers, and the rest of the boat's crew, as we do our labourers, at so much a day. All the oysters are brought on shore, where they are laid in a great heap till the pearl fishery is over, which continues during the months of November and December. When opportunity serves, they then examine every oyster, and it is accidental whether the capture turns out advantageous. Indeed no human being can wish well to a commerce, which thus chains such a number of fellow-creatures to the bottom, to pluck up a glittering, mouldering pebble.

CHAPTER VII.

OF MULTIVALVE SHELL-FISH.

MULTIVALVE shell-fish may be considered as animals shut up in round boxes. To view their habitations externally, one would be little apt to consider them as the retreats of living creatures; and still less to suppose that some of them carry their boxes with a tolerable share of swiftness, so as to escape their pursuers. Of these there are principally two kinds; such as move, and such as are stationary: the first are usually known in our cabinets by the name of

sea-eggs; the others are as often admired, from the cavities which they scoop out for their habitation in the hardest marble. The first are called by naturalists, Echini, or Urchins; the latter are called Pholades, or File-fish. Of both there are several sorts; but, by describing these two, we shall have a competent idea of all the rest.

On a slight view, the sea urchin may be compared to the husk of a chesnut; being like it round, and with a number of bony prickles standing out on every side, To exhibit this extraordinary animal in every light-If we could conceive a turnip stuck full of pins on every side, and running upon these pins with some degree of swiftness, we should have some idea of this extraordinary creature. The mouth is placed downwards; the vent is above; the shell is a hollow vase, resembling a scooped apple; and this filled with a soft muscular substance, through which the intestines wind from the bottom to the top. The mouth which is placed undermost, is large and red, furnished with five sharp teeth, which are easily discerned. The jaws are strengthened by five small bones, in the centre of which is a small fleshy tongue; and from this the intestines make a winding of five spires round the internal sides of the shell, ending at top, where the excrements are excluded. But what makes the most extraordinary part of this animal's conformation, are its horns and its spines, that point from every part of the body, like the horns of a snail, and that serve at once as legs to move upon, as arms to feel with, and as instruments of capture and defence. Between these horns it has also spines that are not endued with such a share of motion. The spines and the horns issue from every part of the body; the spines being hard and prickly, the horns being soft, longer than the spines, and never seen except in the water. They are put