Show THE OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINE- R Hoitf O i 9't 1 - O J ' 'A 1 X V W Will Breed the Beautiful Stones Off the Florida Coast to Rival Japan's Activity H H f 1 4: VA 'a 1 " n fyrf U ' M I f1 H H 4 $ ff ti 4 iV II r? II f P: "S 't fr sty Br RENE BACHE ' i ilKJ (Noted Scientific Research Expert) rr-UI- E United States Government that great I institution of many interests is about to launch a new business venture the growing of "culture pearls" The new undertaking will be under the auspices of the Bureau of Fisheries and a preliminary survey indicates that Florida will be the background for these experiments Black Water Sound Palmasola Bay and Largo Sound are said to offer suitable conditions f or the work Skilled - lapidaries may bend lovingly over their gems in New York's "treasure chest" area bringing put the hidden beauty which nature has stored in their many facets Gold workers may tend their molten metal and delight in the soft shadows which it casts as they fashion it into delicate traceries — but when it comes to pearls emblems of purity and beloved of kings and princes all must bow to His Majesty the Oyster! At present there are rumblings in the East occasioned by the preparations of this latter The East monarch who would go long has known cultural or "surgical" pearls and pearl oysters of superior variety will be Japan where the culture brought from far-o- ff of pearls has been particularly highly developed A I V Mfci uti Lnce Sam s Oysters £ I III? " Industry rv fa-rtf r'-- v V - i I --1 : ' At U i l It 4 fas v p A yj 1 J 4 1 sometimes come schools and destroy a whole oyster bed The oysters that have been treated are packed in cages of wire net Each cage has a door The cages are then suspended from skeleton floats and at intervals of a few months these cages are pulled up and cleaned Y4 — wi- - - ':v Above: The First Stage of the "surgical pearl" Process: a Japanese Oyster Farm with Workers Lowering Wire Frames Bivalve-Lade- n into the Depths Culture pearls produced by the newest methods are in no way different from natural pearls Indeed they really are natural pearls grown by pearl oysters in the ordinary way save that a special scientific treatment is used to aid "the process The methods employed by the Bureau of Fisheries will be the same as those used so successfully in Japan The Japanese thanks to a novel and ingenious technique have been producing perfectly spherical pearls of highest lustre In nature a pearl may be formed about a grain of sand or any matter whichforeign affect the health f the The latter aolluscs are kept In this way for our years and at the end of that pearl-beari- or saA ng " Vj - time they aro carried ashore and opened " I Seven 4 I ' yearsa ' f ft - lu l f ff ?? i' should produce Not sizable pearl at that 'always does the surgery prove successful A majority of the oysters when opened are found to contain no 'shell Jew-el- r - - ----- Vv v rK- - H 1 Attempts to accomplish this have been made In a great variety ©f ways but heretofore with no satisfactory results The new process depends upon surgery of the s" as the Japanese call the pearls But a comfortable - percentage of the do yield and very pearls beautiful ones Pearl oysters are native to the Bay of Ago and for centuries the island on which the village of Toba Is located has been the centre of The a pearl-fishin- g industry pearls of course are obtained by diving and the divers are all women They are more expert than men and are able to stay under water for longer periods It Is only the young women oysters mother-of-pea- rl The Second Stages ' Women Divers with Their Tubs Conveniently Adjacent so They most delicate kind performed with Can Be Quickly Filled with Oysters sterilized instruments and with as in be would care as much required a hospital operating room To provide perfect globes of pure sparks ling white for milady's edification id amuscmiT-- t science does every Mffl thing but give the pearl oyster an anesthetic The pearl-growiindustry in of one firm hand3 Is the in Japan which operates in the Bay of Ago and the vicinity maintaining eight aquatic "farms" to breed and rear the fr principal station pearl oysters The of Toba About 13 near the village one thousand persons are employed More than a million pearls are produced annually The work a progression of constant and watchful attention begins in May and June with the planting on the bottom in shallow water of $tones weighing about eight pounds each These are placed to catch the "spat" thrown out by spawning pearl i oysters The work of planting these stones is performed by women and these same workers recover the stones in November of the same year When mouth of the bag is tied with a thread and! the taken up the stones are covered with young whole preparation i3 inserted into a cut ini the oysters about the size of dimes and these mantle of another pearl oyster are thejmportant little workers cared for 60 For protection To accomplish this the shell of the second solicitously until maturity water the young oysters oyster which is to produce the pearl has to be' against possible coldbeds several fathoms below forced slightly open The cut is made with a are transplanted to sterilized lancet and after the ba? has beeij in-- : the surface i serted the wound is sterilized The little bagi Here they remain for three years when they the pellet and the thread must first be rendered are ready to be treated for the production ir-of free from germs The best and most modern pearls In nature when a foreign bodya or shell of pearl technique of antisepsis is employed and the' opritating particle lodges in the eration is completed with the withdrawal of the oyster the latter envelops it in a sac of tissue from its "mantle" and in this way the formation thread used for tying the bag Much practice has enabled the oyster surof a pearl begins It is the mantle which lines the shell that secretes the pearl-stuf- f geons to perform the operation with great By adopting this idea the Japanese have sucrapidity so that one expert can treat several ceeded in producing by artificial means pearls hundreds of the bivalves in a day The latter that are in all respects lik© natural ones Part after receiving treatment are returned to i the a petrl oyster and of the mantle is removed from sea not merely turned loose on the bottom how-evmade into a little bag - Inside of the bag is for that might expose them to attacks from Then the placed a tiny pellet of mother-of-pea- rl natural enemies particularly octopuses wjiich 11118 ti -if- - t J::::' II J y ng v r ' f v 111 ine final stage: oiriKing vosiurae surgical pearls worn oy a i rencn Dancer at the New Casino de Paris Kevue pearl-bearin- 40-pou- nd i - n vi j I 1 j vM- tVJ' ia I er j ZT'-- '" pearl-fishin- i :! 4? A f ( Pearl Oysters Heady for the Bern oval of the Pearls lA I riJTnif in Iftwtpipw Future 6rrlo - j ' 1 f f t lT r 1 j t" I Above Another lew of the Divers At Right: Cages cl I iJt CnTTT' "Wiim— I 1 j - ' —— who do the diving from eighteen to twenty-fiv- e They are remarkably robust and all of them have strikingly red hair caused by constant saturation with sea water They wear white cot- -' to ton pajamas and caps and use a Is with one Each their provided eyes protect which is left floating and ready to receiro tub ' oysters that are brought to the surface Any small object introduced Into the shell of an oyster will in time acquire a coating of pearl-stuThe idea is very old For centuries Chinese priests have obtained by this means pearly images of Buddha which sold by thera to Ignorant people are revered as of su-Pellets of wax and other pernatural origin used in the same way but these been have things - formations do not really resemble pearls Among the peoples of the Malay Archipelago there is a generally accepted belief that- if a few pearls are sealed in a bottle with some- grains of rice for nourishment they will grow bigger and increase in number In Borneo thero is hardly a fisherman's hut that has not Its bottle of "breeding pearls' tucked away on a shelf This peculiar belief is given color by the suif tha perstition that the pearls will grow afaster bottle is corked with the finger of dead man To procure this gruesome cork tha natives frequently rifle nearby graves As interesting as is the work of producing culture pearls it is hardly so colorful as the processes obtaining where natural pearls are found One of the world's oldest fishing grounds is located in the Gulf of Manaar from six to isle eight miles off the western shore near the conof Tuticorin The Government exercises trol of these Indian fishing grounds and diving generally starts the second week in March The boats grouped in fleets of sixty set out beneath a midnight moon and in fan formation bear down upon the spot where they are to work arriving at about sunrise The divers work in pairs one man scouring g the bottom for oysters while his companion stays in the boat tends the signal line and hauls op the diver's basket after the latter hat filled it with oysters Before going stone to down the diver attaches a himself to aid him in quickly reaching the bottom Native divers usually work naked save for a girdle at the waist tp which they attach the basket for the oysters The average dive lasts from fifty to eighty seconds- but instances are recorded where a particularly experienced diver has stayed "beneath the surface for as many as six minutes The diver remains below the surface until exhausted lie then returns to the boat and his companion undertakes the work beneath the surface While working on the bottom the diver uses his toes to great advantage searching for the oysters and picking them up with his feet Spikes of ironwood are the weapons upon which the diver relies for protection against sharks and other nsn winch infest the Indian waters He does not rely entirely upon his own prowess however and few Indian divers will descend until a "shark charmer" has recited an Incantation over the surface of the waters Such a g fleet conjurer Is carried In each As a general thing pearl divers don't live long When the fieet returns to Its bass the oysters are divided into four heaps The diver receives one pile as payment for his work and the rest are auctioned off by the thousand After the removal of the pearls the latter are grouped in classes by passing through a ssrles of brass colanders the holes in each successive colander being smaller than those of the last After this they are sorted according to color and weight Bombay and Bagdad have been foremost pearl markets for many years the former receiving a large number of the yellow tinted pearls found in abundance while the latter market disposes of the great white pearls of unusual lustre and value water-goggl- X i particle of foreign matter that finds its way Into a pearl oyster's shelL The notion that It owes Its origin to a parasitic worm has been hotly debated and disproved In one recorded instance a tiny crustacean was found to be the nucleus of a pearl Science has now learned how to provide a suitable nucleus for a pearl and the oyster does the rest wrapping it in' a ' series of coats of nacre - of ' r s re - 1928 - "— ' i'r?iteWeeieeeMlwwewewiBewewteaM ' 'iX'n'tlt 4 ''t 1 d es |