HUNTING FOR PEARLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9912, 29 July 1910, Page 2

HUNTING FOR PEARLS.

There are many obvious dangers to those engaged in the pearl fisheries, quite apart from the particular perils which are inseparable from the occupation of tlie diver. . Every fragment of often decomposing flesh has to be picked to pieces'in the search for the valuable product, and in the process tho hands may get torn by the sharp or ragged edges of tho shell, and the wounds received may very well become the cause of blood-poisoning.- Seeing that every oyster has to bo opened, and in a large number of cases without finding anything of value within, the mcro Waste that ensues is in itself a steadv impoverishment of the oyster l>anks. But it seems that all this is to bo a thing of the past. Tho resources of modern science have been failed in. and tho application, of the X-rays, suggested some years ago by ])r Dubois, is actually in operation at Irmntivu, in the Ceylon Islands. The oysters aro arranged about a hundred at a time upon a kind.of moving- platform, and aro passed in succession under tho rays and above a special paper devised" for direct radiography. Naturally there is no occasion to open tie ovsters at all; unless the subsequent development of the prepared paper betrivs the presence of something worth opening thorn for. If tho pearls descried within are small the oysters are replaced in their natural homo, and aro from time to time re-examined until the pearls are large enough.for commercial purposes. After the pearls aio extracted the oysters can be restored to their native element. There remains much to be done with respect to tho further treatment of the shells that .contain small grain pearls, but no doubt it will not bo long before means aro devised for ensuring that the small neurl shall have every" opportunity of "increasing its size. The manager of tho .liberies at the- island mentioned, Mr J. Solomon, has every reason to bo satisfied with his' achievements! so far. It is something to have abolished tho wasteful methods cf the past under which every oyster brought to the surface had to- Bo destroyed in tho operation of investigating its contents. That pearls aro apt to lose their colour is but too well" known to the owner,-, of these lovely natural product".