#1.
Anecdote: My Madrile?a mother-in-law, a great pearl fanatic, has always been under the impression that madre perla and n?car are not synonymous, although unable to define the differences. Nonetheless, it seems that at some point a distinction has been made.
...
#2.
But it's simply incredible that this pearl, reputed according to Dr. Tom by parties in and around the Sulu Sea to be found only once every few decades, should be so perfect…
#1.
Isn't that right!
The 'other literatures' I was thinking of when writing the previous post were in the natural sciences and materials science. That shell material (trying for a neutral term here) may be called by several different words in different languages hadn't crossed my mind! I can only account for English, French and Romanian aside your Spanish.
'Bet there are speakers of at least a few more posting 'round here!
Without thorough investigation, it sounds like each has a couple of common nuns for shell stuff, each more likely to be used in some context then another. But I can't find any common noun specific for the porcelaneous (ok, that's one specialized description, but hardly in common usage) shells in any! Perhaps because those shells had that much less use over time?
If the explanation stands, then it looks like the situation is similar to the state of the pearl vocabulary relevant here - those 'other pearls' being outsiders to the 'nacre establishment', with status questioned (not sure why, since these are such scarce oddities anyway; unless there's a flood of conch, 'dacna and bailer pearls somewhere, just waiting to flood over traditional pearly pearls into oblivion, LOL!). Can't imagine that knowing that this millennium there can be two buckets of conch pearls overall, makes these sound less valuable then never making the estimate
But again... who knows?
Oh well... some discussions are way more fun then others!
regardless of practicality.
#2.
Is there any single factor making round-ness more likely for 'normal' bivalve-originating pearls? (only ever herd some myths of this)
It does sound extreme (wrote as much myself up this thread) that with so much nautilus shell harvested, there should be such few pearls. I wonder whether anyone can do that sort of math right, though. And if so, if anyone would put the necessary work to get such a contentious result out in the open! No wonder there really are no comparable estimates attempted about any gem material at all. Would not hope for sudden exception about the latest addition to the roster of natural pearls species...
Besides,
- we'd need a 'nautilus doctor' in the house for this one: perhaps start with the story of how these critters even grow their pearls! Bet it is a rather different story then the usual bivalve's discussed here so far.
and
- ratios of 'one in a million' are nearly inconceivable about anything! (not that there's any logic in this, of course) Perhaps that's one reason why no one really bothered to count how scarce precious stones and natural pears are 'exactly' - if not 'one in a million', then probably still some inconceivable ratio to
whatever (?) proxy .
Hm... at a second thought, the matter seems less worth questioning then it did ten posts ago (or so).
