then to make
the best of their bargain. Whether this method of preventing
peculation has been actually adopted, I have not learned.

Our own Scottish rivers are frequented by a large bivalve mollusc,
which produces true pearls, although their size and number have
never been sufficient to attract capitalists or sustain a steady
trade. I do not know how others operate in other localities, but
here is a method which I either invented for myself or borrowed from
a neighbour, and practised with considerable success on the river
Earn in Perthshire when I was a boy:--Provide a long straight rod,
thin and broad and rounded at the point after the manner of a
paper-cutter. Jump into a light fishing-boat, and bring it right
over the oyster bed when the sun shines brightly and no ripple
disturbs the surface of the water. Bring the boat into such a
position with respect to the sun that your own body, bending over
the gunwale, will throw a shadow on the immediately subjacent
surface. Through that shaded spot you see the bottom with great
distinctness, and can distinguish there the objects of your search
lying invitingly still, and open, and unconscious. The depth may be
from six to twelve feet. The molluscs lie bedded in the mud, with
one edge above the ground, and that edge slightly open. Push your
rod now gently down in a perpendicular direction,--for if you permit
an angle the different degrees of refraction in the air and water
will make your straight rod crooked, and you will egregiously miss
your object at every stroke,--until its point is within an inch or
two of the opening between the shells of the mollusc, and then
quickly plunge it in. Hold it still there for a few seconds until
the creature has time to close and bite the rod, you may then pull
it up at your leisure. Throw your capture into the bottom of the
boat, and proceed in the same manner with the next. When you have
collected a sufficient store, sit down and open them one by one with
a knife, feeling carefully with your thumbs for the little hard
round knots among the velvet folds. These knots, when extricated
from the fleshy lobes that cover them, turn out to be pearls, in
form more or less globular, and in sheen more or less bright. You
rejoice more or less, accordingly, in your capture. The day on which
a good pearl was found became a day to be remembered in the family
group. The price of