Another fallacy revealed! I had always heard that pearls formed when a grain of sand found its way inside an oyster,mussel or clam,not true. It is a small piece of clay,mud,worm,small crab or parasite that causes the pearl to form. As a defense mechanism,the mollusk attempts to isolate the foreign matter by secreting nacre (also known as mother of pearl). Over time many layers of nacre are formed around the intruding object and a pearl is made. The rounder the object-the rounder the pearl. The color of the pearl depends on the mollusk that incubates it. Cultured pearls are real pearls,but they are formed through human intervention known as perliculture.
The first person to produce a cultured pearl was taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus. After visiting a pearl fishery he thought there should be another way of growing pearls without relying on nature. He experimented by putting a piece of plaster of paris inside a mussel shell. He retrieved the pearls six years later the size of peas.
The first person to produce a cultured pearl was taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus. After visiting a pearl fishery he thought there should be another way of growing pearls without relying on nature. He experimented by putting a piece of plaster of paris inside a mussel shell. He retrieved the pearls six years later the size of peas.
No comments:
Post a Comment