shells. The mussels that contain pearls are generally known by being a little contracted, or contorted from their usual shape. A Mr. Wynn had a valuable collection of pearls, procured from the Conway, amongst which Gibson says that he noted a stool-pearl, of the form and bigness of a lesser button mould, weighing seventeen grains. A Conway pearl presented to the queen of Charles II., by her chamberlain, Sir Richard Wynn (perhaps of the family of this Mr. Wynn), is said still to be one of the ornaments of the British crown. Camden also speaks of pearls found in the river Irt, in Cumberland. "These," he says, "the inhabitants gather up at low water; and the jewellers buy them of the poor people for a trifle, but sell them at a good price." Gibson adds (writing in the beginning of the last century), that not long since a patent had been granted to some persons for pearl-fishing in this river; but the pearls, he says, were not very plentiful here, and were most of the dull-coloured kind, called sand-pearl. Mention is made in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, of several pearls of large size that were found in the sixteenth century in Ireland; among the rest, one that weighed thirty-six carats.[1] Pennant (Tour in Scotland, 1769) gives an account of a pearl-fishery then carried on in the neighbourhood of Perth, in Scotland, which, though by that time nearly exhausted, had, a few years before, produced between three and four thousand pounds' worth of pearls annually. An eminent naturalist, we observe, has recently expressed some surprise that the regular fisheries which once existed for this native gem should have been abandoned.[2] The pearl, however, though still a gem of price, is not now held in the same extraordinary estimation as in ancient times, when it appears, indeed, to have been considered more valuable than any other gem whatever. "The chief and topmost
