Pearls are among the world's most-coveted gem-stones. From the Roman Empire and Renaissance Europe, to imperial China, India, and Russia, to ancient North America and the present day, they have been treasured, sought, traded, bought, and stolen.

Arriving in finished condition from their bio­logical sources salt water pearl oysters and fresh­water pearl mussels-they have long fascinated both scientists and queens. For those ancient peoples that held pearls in high esteem, they have served as por­tions of national treasuries and financed wars.

Once too precious for all but nobility; today pearls are given to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and other special occasions.
Dictionaries define a pearl as a white or grayish mass, formed by an oyster, and highly prized as a gem for its luster. The classic concept, as well as the current gemological definition, presumes that pearls are nacreous, or made of mother-of-pearl (nacre).

But not all pearls are nacreous, and not all come from oysters. For the purposes of this book, a pearl is a calcareous body, composed of con­centric layers around a central nucleus, and organi­cally produced by a living mollusk, a soft-bodied invertebrate animal bearing a hard external shell. In some cases, a pearl is the mollusks response to invasion by a foreign body; the mollusk coats the invader to lessen the irritation it causes.

This foreign body is usually organic and, contrary to pop­ular lore, is hardly ever a grain of sand.

Although the most familiar pearls are small perfect spheres, they are more commonly irregular, ranging from slightly off-round to bizarre asymmetrical, and from minute to massive. Pearls have been produced throughout the evolutionary history of mollusks, beginning in the Cambrian Period, 530 million years ago. Fossil pearls are known from more than thirty species of mollusks, some from as many as 225 million years ago, and were common during the Age of Dinosaurs.

As one of humankind's oldest gems, pearls have inspired many theories about their forma­tion. To ancient Romans, they were the frozen tears of oysters or the gods. Greeks attributed pearls to lightning strikes at sea. The dew theory, upheld by many peoples from antiquity through the seven­teenth century; held that pearls were solidified rain or dewdrops, captured by the clams. This theory probably originated in Arabia, Iran, or India. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder was one of its leading proponents.

When the genial season of the year exercises its influence on the animal, it is said that, yawning, as it were, it opens its shell, and so receives a kind of dew, by means of which it becomes impregnated; and that at length it gives birth, after many struggles, lo the burden of its shell, in the shape of pearls, which vary according to the quality of the dew.

Columbus noted in the Gulf of Paria, in present-day Venezuela, that "close to the sea there were countless oysters adhering to the branches of the trees which dip into the sea, with their mouths open to receive the dew which falls from the leaves, until the drop falls out of which pearls will be formed." By the end of the Renaissance such views came under challenge.

The English pirate Richard Hawkins succinctly dismissed the dew theory as "some old philosopher's conceit." In 1609, Anselmus de Boodt speculated that

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