Читать книгу The Book of the Pearl. The history, art, science, and industry of the queen of gems онлайн

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PANAMA SHELL

(Margaritifera margaritifera mazatlanica) With pearls attached

VENEZUELA SHELL

(Margaritifera radiata) Showing growth of pearls

Pliny’s views were probably derived from the ancient authorities of his time, particularly from Megasthenes, Chares of Mytilene, and Isidorus of Charace; and these curious fictions were incorporated by subsequent writers and influenced popular opinion for many centuries. With scarcely a single exception, every recorded theory from the first century B.C. to the fifteenth century evidences a belief in dew-formed pearls.

This theory is referred to by Thomas Moore in his well-known lines:

And precious the tear as that rain from the sky,

Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.

The Spanish-Hebrew traveler Benjamin of Tudela, in his “Masaoth” in Persia (from 1160 to 1173), wrote: “In these places pearls are found, made by the wonderful artifice of nature: for on the four and twentieth day of the month Nisan, a certain dew falleth into the waters, which being sucked in by the oysters, they immediately sink to the bottom of the sea; afterwards, about the middle of the month Tisri, men descend to the bottom of the sea, and, by the help of cords, these men bringing up the oysters in great quantities from thence, open and take out of them the pearls.”^[41]