ARTIFICIAL PEARLS. Attempts have been made to take out stains from pearls, and to render the foul opaque-coloured ones equal in lustre to the oriental. Numerous processes are given for this purpose in books of secrets and travels; but they are very far from answering what is expected from them. Pearls may be cleaned indeed from any external foulness by washing and rubbing them with a little Venice soap and warm water, or with ground rice and salt, with starch and powder blue, plaster of paris, coral, white vitriol and tartar, cuttle-bone, pumice-stone, and other similar substances; but a stain that reaches deep into the substance of pearls is impossible to be taken out. Nor can a number of small pearls be united into a mass similar to an entire natural one, as some pretend.
There are, however, methods of making artificial pearls, in such manner as to be with difficulty distinguished from the best oriental. The ingredient used for this purpose was long kept a secret; but it is now discovered to be a fine silver-like substance found upon the under side of the scales of the blay or bleak fish. The scales, taken off in the usual manner, are washed and rubbed
rubbed with fresh parcels of fair water, and the several liquors suffered to settle: the water being then poured off, the pearly matter remains at the bottom, of the consistence of oil, called by the French essence d'orient. A little of this is dropped into a hollow bead of bluish glass, and thaken about so as to line the internal surface; after which the cavity is filled up with wax, to give solidity and weight. Pearls made in this manner are distinguishable from the natural only by their having fewer blemishes.
Mother-of-PEARL, the shell, not of the pearl oyster, but of the mytilus margaritiferus. See MYTILUS, CONCHIOLOGY INDEX.