" Wear
The spoils of nations in an car, Chang'd for the treasure of a shell."
Pliny's picture of a Roman lady is amusing enough, es- pecially as seen through the glass of old Philemon Hol- land's translation: "I myselfe haue seen Lollia Pau- lina (late wife, and after widdow, to Cains Caligula the emperor), when she was dressed and set out, not in stately wise, nor of purpose for some great solemnity, but only when she was to go to a wedding supper, or rather unto a feast, when the assurance was made, and great persons they were not that made the said feast; I have seen her, I say, so beset and bedeckt all over with hcmeraulds and pearles, disposed in rows, ranks, and courses one bj' another; round about the attire of her head, her cawle, her borders, her peridi of hair, her bond grace and cha|)let; at her eares pendant, about her neck in a carcanet, upon her wrest in bracelets, and on her lingers in rings; that she glistened and shon again like the sun as she went. The value of these ornaments she esteemed and rated at four hundred thousand sestertii, and offered openly to prove it out of hand by her bookes of accounts and reckonings," etc. Julius Ciesar is reported to have presented Servilia, the mother of JI. Brutus, witli a pearl worth a quarter of a million of dollars; and Claudius, the son of yEsop the successful Roman actor, imitated and even exceeded the wanton folly of Cleopatra.
Pearls are accidental concretions of shelly matter de- posited within the valves of certain bivalve Mollusca, of which the most celebrated species is the Avicula marr/ariiifera, which is spread over the wiiolc of the tropical parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans. In all bivalves the surface of the mantle has the power of de- positing calcareous matter in thin layers, which harden- ing forms a shelly coat on the inner side of the valves, and in most species this lining has a pearly lustre. A pearl is nothing but an abnormal shell, reversed; that is to say, the nacreous coat is here external. The pe- culiar lustre of nacre is dependent on the fact that the surface is not perfectly smooth, but covered with the irregularly sinuous edges of innumerable layers of in-
conceivable tliinness, which are deposited one over the other. The distance of these edges from each other varies indeliiiitely, the pearls of the tinest water having them closest ; they are always, however, too fine to be detected by the naked eye. These edges make so many steiis, so to speak ; and the iridescence is produced by the mutual interference of the rays of light reflected from these thousands of angles. For their u'ater, or lustre, as distinguished from iridescence, pearls are indebted to their being composed of thin layers, which allow light to pass through them, while their numerous surfaces disperse and reflect the light in such a manner that it returns and mingles with that which is directly reflect- ed from the exterior. The thinner and more transpar- ent the constituent layers, the more perfect is the lus- tre (Kelaart and Mtibius, Annals of Nat. Hist. Feb. 1858). The immediate occasion of the production of a pearl appears to be always the presence of some ex- traneous substance, such as a grain of sand, an egg ei- ther of the mollusk or of some other animal, some para- sitic intruder, or the silicious shell of one of the Lia- tomacea on which the oyster feeds. Hence pearls may be artificially educed by inserting foreign matters prop- erly shaped and fastened inside the shell. Though pearl-fisheries have been established in various parts of the world, yet the most productive are still those which have been worked from antiquity. The annual produce of the Bahrein bank — the ancient Tylos — is set down at $1,000,000. The fishery near Cape Como- rin— probably the Perimula of Pliny — yielded to the British government (in 18G7) a net revenue of 81,917 star-pagodas. That on the western coast of Ceylon is, however, stated to be the richest of all ; it is a monop- oh- in the hands of the British government, but we have no statistics of its actual value. The fullest de- tails of the pearl-fishery are those given of this last by Captain Percival {Hist, of Ceylon'): by Dr. Kelaart in his Report of the same, and by Dr. Mbbius in his gen- eral resume of the subject {Die echtvn Perlen, Hamb. 1857). The Unio maroaritiferus, Mytilus ediilis, and Osirea edulis (common oyster) of our own country, oc- casionally furnish pearls.^Fairbairn. The shell of the pearl-oyster constitutes the well-known mother-of- pearl, which is extensively used for ornaments, espe- cially in Bethlehem. Those of Palestine are procured from the Red Sea. See Gem.
Peail-oysler [Avicula Margaritifcra).
Pearne, William N., a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in Rochester, England, and came to this country in 1822. He resided at New York Mills some years as the principal business agent and ac- countant of a large manufacturing establishment. We are not able to state at what time he became a member of the Methodist Church. IMost likely it was before his immigration to this country. His social relations in England were of a high order. Dr. Paddock, when sta- tioned in Utica, formed a class in Pearne's house and macie him leader. He sustained an unblemished charac- ter, and his powers rapidly developing, he soon became an able minister. He was calm and dispassionate, but there was enough of emotion and of thought to command a deep and profound attention. In 1833 he joined the