Crossword-Solution: PINNAS 6 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Coal-black pearls occur in one of the pinnas, the interior of which is sooty, shot with iridescent purple, and since the pearl, whether produced by oyster, mussel, pinna, or window-shell, is generally more brilliant than the containing shell, that of the black pinna, with the high lights of its environment concentrated, may be a gem of surpassing novelty and beauty.

Was it possible for human nature to deny itself so easily gotten and pretty a prize? I confess, though the possibility of the pearl increasing in size and loveliness was obvious, that the fact that pinnas are subject to ills, chances, and mishaps, was also recognised.

The most perfect silver that is brought from Peru is in the forms called _pinnas_ by the Spaniards, being extremely porous lumps of silver, as they are the remainder of a paste composed of silver dust and mercury, whence the latter being exhaled or evaporated, leaves the silver in a spongy mass, full of holes, and very light.

When they design to make many _pinnas_, or spongy lumps of various weights, these are divided from each other by thin beds or layers of earth, which hinder them from uniting.

All these ingots, having paid the fifth, are sure to be without fraud or deceit; but it is not so with the _pinnas_, as these have often iron, sand, or some other matter contained within them, to increase their weight; Hence, prudence requires that these should be opened, and made red hot in a fire; for, if falsified, the fire will turn them black or yellow, or melt them more easily.