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Show Japanese "Pearl Farms" Prove Good Investment By leasing about 40,000 acres of warm salt water in various bays along the shores of Japan, planting 8,000,000 small oysters known scientifically scien-tifically as mngarltifera martensl -' each year, performine a major sur gical operation on each of them, then nursing the patients tenderly . for seven years, an average of $2,0O0.00 worth of Japanese culture pearlo Is produced for world markets annually. The originator and controlling factor fac-tor in this strange Industry is Kochl-chi Kochl-chi Miklmoto, known as the "pearl king" of Jnpan. For 23 years he operated nine pearl farms before raising a profitable crop. Now, though by means of the scientific methods he developed, he and his thousand assistants care for 7,000.000 pearl oysters constantly, and the raising of culture pearls has ceased to be an experiment, writes Ear! Chapin May In Popular Science Monthly. All pearls are produced by Irri- tated oysters. A wild, natural or virgin vir-gin pearl results when a bit of sand, a minute crustacean or some other tiny foreign substance accidentally gets into the oyster's body. If It Is not able to eject the intruder, the oyster surrounds It with layers of a substance which. In time, becomes a pearl. The great value of natural pearls Is due chiefly to the fact that relatively few of them are of profitable profit-able size and quality. In the comparatively warm sea water wa-ter of the Miklmoto pearl farms millions mil-lions of small oysters, hatched naturally, nat-urally, but under a certain amount of supervision, float for a while and then attach themselves to small stones strewn on the bottom. There they remain for three years. Then Japanese diving girls go down and get them. |