Pearl Culture

Experiment at Tahiti

From Our Own Correspondent PAPEETE, January 29.

THAT the market for pearls and mother-of-pearl shell is not com pletely dead is shown by the return to Tahiti of Mr. Victor Berge, who was here some years ago with a submarine equipment, invented by himself, for looking at the bottom of the sea and taking under-water pictures.

Mr. Berge then worked secretly and in remote places, so that the local people knew little of what he was about. But he evidently met with some success, for he went away and wrote a book called “Pearl Diver,” which had a good circulation, and he has now returned with a wife, and is well backed by capital, so he says, from one of the principal jewellery houses of Paris.

Just now Mr. Berge is investigating the lagoon island of Tetiaroa to ascer tain its suitability for the project he has in view—the planting of pearl oysters and subseouent culture of pearls artificially. What he needs is a lagoon without an entrance from the ocean, so that predatory fishes may be kept under control to some extent.

We wish him luck with his new enter prise.