Our knowledge of pearls reaches back about twenty-three hundred years, through the writings of Pliny, who nearly nineteen hundred years ago gathered the facts of his day and the rumors of traditions concerning them. Beyond that we can only surmise that in prehistoric ages, with the dawn of intelligence in the infantile period of the race, men dwelling near tropic seas were attracted by them as children are by bright and pretty baubles; and that as humanity by families, tribes and nations, grew out of savagery to the mental stature of a man, so pearls grew to be jewels very precious. THE FASHION OF PEARLS Although the pearl like all other jewels, has had its periods of extreme and general public favor, unlike other gems if it is once appreciated by an individual or a nation it is never utterly discarded by either. If not the fashion, pearls are always in fashion. Far as we can look back among the dim, uncertain figures of the mystic past whose shades stand where the unknown multitudes have fallen, we find pearls. The princes of India through all their generations, the dynasties of Egypt, the royalties of Persia, the wild chiefs of Arab tribes, the potentates of Greece, Rome and Venice, the houris of Turkey, the Queens of every European court, from the time they found a place in history until now, all wear pearls. At first thought this seems strange, for of all gems the origin of the pearl is most humble. No titanic forces, groaning in the travail of subterranean convulsions, crushed and ground and fired its particles to shape and beauty. It grew, a few fathoms deep, where the waters are at peace, in the embrace of a mollusk and out of its exudations. [Illustration: PRINCESS ABAMALEK LAZAREFF ( _From the painting by Vitelleschi _)]