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

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Somewhat more than one hundred years later, this theory was confirmed by investigations made by the famous physicist Réaumur (1683–1757). Microscopic examination of cross sections of pearls show that they are built up of concentric laminæ similar, except in curvature, to those forming the nacreous portion of the shell. In a paper published by the French Academy of Science in 1717,^[52] Réaumur noted this condition, and suggested that pearls are misplaced pieces of organized shell, and are formed from a secretion which overflows from the shell-forming organ or from a ruptured vessel connected therewith, and that the rupture or overflow is ordinarily produced by the intrusion of some foreign or irritating substance.

Sir Edwin Arnold calls attention to this theory in his beautiful lines:

Know you, perchance, how that poor formless wretch—

The Oyster—gems his shallow moonlit chalice?

Where the shell irks him, or the sea-sand frets,

He sheds this lovely lustre on his grief.

In pursuance of this idea, we find, in 1761, the Swedish naturalist Linnæus, “the father of natural history,” experimenting in the artificial production of pearls by the introduction of foreign bodies in the shell, and meeting with some degree of success. His discovery was rated so highly that it has been announced by some writers as the reason why the great naturalist received the patent of nobility, which is generally supposed to have been the reward for his services to science.