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

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It was not long before the aborigines of America were not alone in discrediting the views which had prevailed in Europe for more than fifteen hundred years. That practical old sailor Sir Richard Hawkins concluded that this must be “some old philosopher’s conceit, for it can not be made probable how the dew should come into the oyster.”^[45] A similar view is expressed by Urbain Chauveton in his edition of Girolamo Benzoni’s “Historia del Mondo Nuovo,” published at Geneva in 1578. From his reference to pearl-oysters on the Venezuelan coast, we translate:

Shells from Venezuela (Margaritifera radiata) with attached pearls

Exterior view of same

X-ray photograph of shell, printed through exterior of shell and showing encysted pearls

Around the island of Cubagua and elsewhere on the eastern coast, are sandy places where the pearl-oysters grow. They produce their eggs in very large quantities and likewise pearls at the same time. But it is necessary to have patience to let them grow and mature to perfection. They are soft at the beginning like the roe of fish; and as the mollusk gradually grows, they grow also and slowly harden. Sometimes many are found in one shell, which are hard and small, like gravel. Persons who have seen them while fishing say that they are soft as long as they are in the sea, and that the hardness comes to them only when they are out of the water. Pliny says as much, speaking of the Orientals in Book IX, of his Natural History, ch. 35. But as to that author and Albert the Great and other writers upon the generation of pearls, who have said that the oysters conceive them by means of the dew which they suck in, and that according as the dew is clear or cloudy the pearls also are translucent or dark, etc., etc.,—all this is a little difficult to believe; for daily observation shows that all the pearls found in the same shell are not of the same excellence, nor of the same form, the same perfection of color, nor the same size, as they would or must be if they were conceived by the dew all at one time. Besides this, in many of the islands the Indians go fishing for them in ten or twelve fathoms depth, and in some cases they are so firmly attached to the rocks in the sea that they can be wrenched off only by main strength. Would it not be difficult for them to inhale the quintessence of the air there? It seems then that it is the germ and the most noble part of the eggs of the oyster which are converted into pearls rather than any other thing; and the diversities of size, color, and other qualities, proceed from the fact that some are more advanced than others, as we see eggs in the body of the hen.^[46]