Probably the chief reason for the general use of the dress on the Australian coast so early was that the shallows were soon exhausted, and naked diving was not successful beyond a depth of fifty feet. With the dress, a diver can work at much greater depths, remain under water an hour or two, and work all the year round. [Illustration: _Copyright, 1892, by The Century Company. _ NATIVE AUSTRALIAN PEARL-DIVERS] In fisheries like those of Ceylon, where the banks are seldom over forty feet deep and well known, being fished over and over again at one season of the year only, at comparatively short intervals (four to six years), the necessity for dress-diving is less and the naked native diver will probably survive for many years although modern innovations are gradually creeping in even among the fisheries controlled by Orientals. The dress consists of a rubber suit all in one piece, which the diver gets into through the neck; leaden-soled boots, corselet to which the helmet is screwed, and chest and back weights. The diver dresses and steps on to the ladder hanging over the boat's side. The air-pipe, life-line, and helmet are attached, the man at the air-pump is set to work, and last of all the face glass is screwed up. A plunge, a splash, and he drops swiftly through the heaving billows to the quiet depths below, his life in the hands of the tender he has left in the boat. This man must feel the diver constantly by the life-line, keep him supplied with air and be ready for any of the emergencies always liable to arise. Only an alert man of good judgment and quick action should tend the life-line, though the most successful diver, a Japanese, on the Australian coast some years ago, had the best tender of that section in the person of his wife. If it is the diver's first plunge, his ears and head will be racked with pain as he descends. This pain will leave him when he reaches bottom, but on his return to the surface he will find his nose and ears bleeding and will probably spit blood also. After this he will not experience pain in diving, but in common with nearly all divers will never be quite free from extreme irritability and bad temper while below; he will also have gained the diver's ability to blow smoke through the ears. Diving is injurious to the health and, if persisted in, produces deafness and incipient paralysis. Few of the divers on the Australian coast now are aborigines. Their antipathy to the dress amounted in many cases to a superstition, so as the fishing was pushed out to deeper waters and the dress became a necessity, they were discarded with the old methods. It is said that in the old times diving had a peculiar effect upon the black-haired natives. By the end of the fishing season the color of their hair became yellow though the natural hue returned later.