he last vatful of
"matter," every step is attended by fickle fortune; and never is the
interest of the people of Portugal or of Mexico keener over a drawing of
a lottery, the tickets of which may have been sold at the very
thresholds of the cathedrals, than is that of the natives of Ceylon and
southern India over the daily results of a Manar fishery.

Each bivalve is a lottery ticket; it may contain a gem worthy of place
in a monarch's crown, or be a seed pearl with a mercantile value of only
a few rupees. Perhaps one oyster in a hundred contains a pearl, and not
more than one pearl in a hundred, be it known, has a value of
importance. Nature furnishes the sea, pearling-banks, oysters, and all
therein contained; the Ceylon administration conducts the undertaking,
and for its trouble and trifling outlay exacts a "rake-off" of two
thirds of all that may be won from the deep. And mere man, the brown or
black diver, receives for his daring and enterprise one oyster in every
three that he brings from the ocean's depths--and his earnings must be
shared with boat-owner, sailors, attendants, and assistants almost
without number.

For size of "rake-off," there is no game of hazard in the world offering
a parallel. The Ceylon government used to exact three out of every four
oysters brought in, the current tribute of two out of three having
become operative only a few years since.

It should be known that the pearl-bearing oyster of the Indian Ocean is
only remotely related to the edible variety of America and Europe. It is
the _Margaritifera vulgaris_, claimed to belong to the animal kingdom,
and not to the fish family, and is never eaten. The eminent marine
biologist in the service of the Ceylon government, Professor Hornell, F.
L. S., who intimately knows the habits of the pearl-oyster of the East,
advances two interesting if not startling premises. One is that the
pearl is produced as a consequence of the presence of dead bodies of a
diminutive parasitical tapeworm which commonly affects the Ceylon
bivalve. The living tapeworm does not induce pearl formation. The
popular belief has been that the pearl was formed by secretions of nacre
deposited upon a grain of sand or other foreign particle drawn within
the oyster through its contact with the sea's bottom. The other Hornell
assertion is that the oyster goeth and cometh at its pleasure; that it
is mobile and competent to travel miles in a few weeks.

[Illustration: MAP OF T