After the pearls are taken from the dead oysters they are first sorted for size. This is done by passing them through a series of ten small brass sieves known as baskets, containing from twenty to one thousand holes. The sieves have twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred, four hundred, six hundred, eight hundred and one thousand holes respectively. The pearls are then sorted for color and quality, weighed and valued. As with all things, really fine pieces are rare, the great mass being ordinary or poor. Herein lies the attraction and excitement of the business for some will find great gems. One may imagine the keen interest of the swarthy buyer who has parted with his hoards, hoping to find a "pearl of great price" when he washes the lustrous spheres from the putrid mass of decaying fish: the eager search; the joy when his eye lights upon a big, white, shining sphere rising up among the heap of little ones; the growing exultation as he picks it out and with feverish interest rolls it about between his fingers to find it without flaw or blemish, or the keen disappointment should his inspection show, as it most frequently does, that it is full of imperfections. Hovering about are the buyers for the great Hindu merchants, agents of far-off princes and Europeans, all watching sharply for great finds and ready to enter into the combat of wits which marks an oriental trading. If one remembers that there are probably twenty-five thousand traders congregated on the hot sands of this far-off shore, the fair dame, whose neck is clasped by a string of these precious globules, may conjure from their lustrous skins, scenes as wild and weird as any fairy tale that set her youth to dreaming. The pearls are sorted into a number of grades. Those perfect in sphericity and luster are called "ani." Anitari meaning "followers" or "companions," are of the same general character, but poorer in those important qualities. Masanku are somewhat irregular in shape and faulty, especially in luster and color. The poorest of this class, lacking the essential qualities, are separated into another grade and called "kallipu." Next come "kural," double or twinned, and "pisal," are misshapen or clustered. Folded or bent pearls are "madanku," and what we would call "rejection," a mixed lot of all sorts and sizes too poor to include in any of the regular classifications, are termed "vadivu." Seed-pearls, the very small pearls of which there are great quantities, are known as "tul." Many of these are ground to "chunam" or shell-lime, and used as an ingredient in a favorite masticatory. The assortments being made, they are weighed and recorded in kalanchu (kalungy) and manchadi (manjaday). The kalanchu is a brass weight equal to 67 grains troy, and the manchadi is a small red berry that is of very even weight when full sized, and is reckoned twenty to a kalanchu.