Note 89 — VIII.

This method of procedure, which is adopted by the rest of the Indian races, and in which the lustreless pearls are swallowed by hens, pigeons, and ducks, so as to be polished up, after being subjected to the preliminary digestion of these birds, has been proved to be anything but beneficial to the pearls as regards loss by attrition. Careful observation has established, for example, that four pearls, weighing twelve grains, have lost four grains by undergoing this process during twelve hours, while eight others, weighing thirty grains, were reduced to twenty grains after a sojourn of two days in the gizzard of a duck.