There are deserted wastes of sand and water under torrid skies, populated almost momentarily with teeming multitudes whose jargon fills the former silences with a world wide medley of tongues. As in a dream, the tremulous air is stirred by the struggling movement of naked slaves, turbanned orientals, men from all lands of the occident, the moving throng weaving constantly new patterns from the variegated colors and fantastic costumes of living threads. And everywhere, beneath the prosaic motion of labor and trading, is the quiver of hope, the excitement of the gambler; the poetry of human passions, unseen, but felt. There are in unfrequented seas, where some lonely atoll draws its circle round a still lagoon, treasures greater than its cargo and the stately ship sailing heedless by. So like the undiscovered pearls of the ocean's bed, the universe holds an exhaustless store of thoughts and truths for those who come after the discoverers of this age. Thought runs in grooves and the grooves outlast many generations; scarcely in a cycle does one look over the ridge and find a species foreign to the rut. Within the walls which the past builds for the present it is more easy to adopt than to bring forth, and so the ancient metaphors, age after age, are with some changes of raiment thrown back upon the world again. But in this new era of acquisition, while this sea-gem is again lifted to the serene heights of most exalted favor, perhaps it will not only shine upon the persons of the fair, but adorn, in simile and metaphor as beautiful as the old, the pages of romance and poetry. GLOSSARY ABALONE.—Name given on the California coast and in the United States to the Haliotis. BALL-PEARL.—Name given to round pearls by pearlers at the inland fisheries of the United States. BAROQUE.—A pearly formation of irregular shape. BASE.—A basic price, subject to the square of the pearl's weight. BASKETS.—Brass sieves used in India for separating pearls of different sizes. BLACK-SHELL.—Pearl oyster shells of which the nacreous lining has a black-edge. BLISTER.—A piece of the mother-of-pearl lining of a pearl-oyster shell, raised above the surface like a blister. BLUEBACKS.—Shell of a variety of Haliotis. BLUE-PEARLS.—Dark, slaty blue-white pearls, principally from the Mexican coast. BOMBAY PEARLS.—Fine pearls from the Arabian and Red Seas, so named because marketed through that city. BUTTON PEARLS.—Shaped like a dome, high or low, rising from a plane and called "high buttons," "buttons" or "low buttons," accordingly. CLAMMER.—One who fishes for mussels by dredging for the shells principally. DEAD PEARLS.—Pearls with a chalky or waxy skin having little or no luster. DRESS.—Diving apparatus consisting of a one piece dress from the neck down, corselet, helmet, air-pipes and life-line. DROP-PEARL.—Ovoid, or obovoid, not necessarily of perfect shape.