Pearls and Pearling Life. By Edwin W. Streeter. (Bell and
Son.)—Thie is an agreeable, gossippy book, put together without any very strict regard to logical sequence. The author, for instance, after describing a very curious natural cluster of pearls known as the "Great Southern Cross Pearl" (it consists of nine pearls arranged together in the shape of a Latin cross, and no astonished its first finders that they buried it), bethinks him that all his readers may not know what is meant by the Southern Cross, and accordingly prints a letter from Lord Crawford describing it. It must be allowed that this is sufficiently remote from the subject of pearls. But he has a great deal to say about them, historically, commercially, and, in fact, in every aspect. The money value of the jewel is, it seems, difficult to estimate. There is nothing so dependent on fashion, nothing in which what seems the most trifling defect co depreciates the worth of the whole. In 1753, a pearl of thirty grains was reckoned to be worth about 225. In 1867, Mr. Henry Emmanuel gives the sum at from £80 to £100. Mr. Streeter calls this "ridiculously low" for the present time, but declines to give any table of prices.
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