Treasure from the Deep

Buried deep in the earth are treasures of all kinds. There are gold and silver. There are precious stones, too, crystal-clear sparkling diamonds, rubies red as roses, deep-blue sapphires and cool green emeralds. The earth, however, is not the only treasure house. The sea, too, has its own treasures to offer.

When we hear of treasures from the bottom of the sea, we think right away of sunken ships with gold and jewels in their hold. We think of daring divers who risk their lives to get back from the deep treasure it claimed.

But did you know that the sea has treasures of its own to offer? It has its own jewels produced by its creature-the oyster which makes smooth round pearls out of any foreign objects that get into its shell.

Quite often, foreign objects like sand or pieces of broken bells get into the oyster's body. These foreign objects which are rough, irritate the oyster who tries to expel them. If it cannot throw out these irritants, then the oyster does the next best thing-it covers the irritant with fluid in order to make it smooth and less irritating. As the years go by, layers and layers of this coating are formed and so what started out as a tiny grain of sand becomes a smooth round pearl, sometimes the size of a marble.

Pearls that are formed this natural way are not always perfectly round. Their shape depends on the shape of the object that gets into the oyster's body. Pearls formed this way also take years to develop. Imagine a grain of sand developing into a pearl as big as a marble! No wonder pearls formed the natural way cost a fortune.

Today, perfectly round pearls are produced in a shorter space of time, thanks to the imagination of an intelligent Japanese, Kokichi Mikimoto. These pearls are called cultured pearls and are known the world over.