It is difficult to compare the price of pearls in ancient times with that of to-day. We make much finer and closer assortments and gradations of quality and the business now is on a more distinctly commercial basis. People generally are better informed and more critical; they are not influenced by wonder, sentiment, superstition and the "Arabian Nights" atmosphere, as much as formerly. The Orient is not as strange and far away as it was. In the old times, jewellers could and undoubtedly did take advantage of the awe with which things from the mysterious East were regarded, and of the general ignorance, to obtain large sums for very ordinary if not inferior gems. Even in these days, many are influenced more by the source from whence they come than by a critical knowledge of the gems they buy. Some, who would not buy the most beautiful fresh-water pearl, will pay an exorbitant price for one poorer and less valuable because it is oriental. La Pellegrina in the hands of an obscure dealer would be passed unnoticed by many who would be enraptured by a more ordinary gem from a jeweller or person of renown. It is presumable therefore that prejudice was more influential when ignorance prevailed to a greater extent than now. John Spruce of Edinburgh in 1705 complained that he could not sell a necklace or pendant of fine Scotch pearls in Scotland. He says "the generality seek for oriental pearls because farther fetched," and continues: "At this very day I can show some of our own Scots pearls as fine, more hard and transparent than any oriental. It is true that the oriental can be easier matched, because they are all of a yellow water, yet foreigners covet Scots pearls." The price in those days was regulated by general appearance and loosely with regard to weight, rather than by definite assortment and the exact system of reckoning by the multiple of the weight as now, for he says, "If a Scotch pearl be of a fine transparent color and perfectly round and of any great bigness, it may be worth 15 to 50 rix dollars, yea I have given 100 rix dollars (about $82.00 U. S.) for one." In 1862, Scotch pearls sold for about seventy-five cents to ten or twelve dollars each, an extraordinary piece bringing occasionally as much as twenty-five dollars, but after they were brought to the favorable notice of persons of distinction and it was known that Queen Victoria had bought one for one hundred and ten dollars, the price of them quadrupled. In the time of Charles II. of England an Irish pearl weighing 144 grains was valued at two hundred dollars. In London during the early part of the nineteenth century, pearls from Panama of good size and quality brought about four dollars per grain.