“Science has discovered,” said Somebody, “that Mr. Oyster accidentally gets a grain of sand, or a small insect inside his shell, which becomes uncomfortable; but as the oyster has no way of opening his door and putting an unwelcome guest outside, it remains. Very likely the unwelcome guest hurts. So Mr. Oyster says, ‘All right, then stay if you want to. But you can’t go on hurting me if I know myself.’ And so he builds a wall of the stuff that the inside of his shell is made of between himself and the cause of the trouble. After about four years the oyster is likely to be caught by pearl fishers, the pearl found, and the shell used for inlaid work on boxes, knife handles and other things. “The finest pearls are gathered in the East, the most valuable, worth tens of thousands of dollars, coming from the oysters of the Persian Gulf. The largest pearl fishery in America is that of lower California, from which come the largest and the finest black pearls on the market. “Carl von Linné, the great Swedish naturalist and botanist, discovered that pearls could be grown by opening the shell of the oyster and slipping a small bead of lead or wax inside the shell and then putting the oyster back in his bed for three or four years. Acting upon that idea, the Chinese and Japanese people have established great pearl raising industries and turn out a large amount of pearls every year. They are very pretty, and of good color, but being flat on one side they cannot be made into necklaces. In several of our states the fresh water clams are pearl bearers; the Mississippi River industry being the one of most value. The shells are used for pearl buttons and the flesh of the mussels are fed to the pigs.” “Makes you think of that verse in the Bible about casting your pearls before swine, doesn’t it?” laughed Billy. About Mr. & Mrs. Pelican “Said Pelican quite pleasantly, ‘Come little fish and play with me’; Said little fishie in a fright, ‘I’ve heard about your appetite,’” read the boy named Billy from little Sister’s Bird Children book. “Wise little fishie wasn’t he youngster?” said he. “Why is a Pelican anyway--he isn’t good to be eaten and his feathers aren’t worth anything, and he doesn’t do anything except to eat fish in great quantities, at least that is all I’ve ever heard about.” “Long ago,” said Somebody, “when the first expeditions went across the Colorado desert which had been, until the Colorado River cut it off, a part of the Gulf of California, some one remarked that if the desert could be watered it could be made to raise food enough for a nation. There was the Colorado River going to waste, of course, but how to harness it up and make it provide water for the desert which it had made was a question which no one could answer.