Cultured pearl Cultured pearl A cultured pearl is a pearl created by an oyster farmer under controlled conditions. Cultured pearls can be farmed using two very different groups of bivalve mollusk: the freshwater river mussels, and the saltwater pearl oysters. A pearl is formed when the mantle tissue is injured by a parasite, an attack of a fish or another event that damages the external fragile rim of the shell of a mollusk shell bivalve or gastropod. In response, the mantle tissue of the mollusk secretes nacre into the pearl sac, a cyst that forms during the healing process. Chemically speaking, this
The Pearl of Love The Pearl of Love "The Pearl of Love" is a 1925 short story about devotion by H. G. Wells. The narrator of Wells's tale—or Wells, if you will—begins by saying that while "[t]he pearl is lovelier than the most brilliant of crystalline stones, the moralist declares, because it is made through the suffering of a living creature," he himself "feel[s] none of the fascination of pearls." The tale he tells is said to be "familiar to students of medieval Persian prose," and a considerable amount of commentary has accumulated around it. But the narrator says he cannot decide "whether The