Curious Facts About Precious Stones

In hi,s lecture on precious stones, Professor Egleston, of the Columbia School of Mines, says there is in Paris a diamond so hard that the usual process for cutting and polishing made 110 impression upon it. The black diamond is mostly used for tools. In Russia it is broken into ilakes, polished, andworn as court mourning. The historie diamonds have no more luster than a piece of glass. The sham diamond was more beautiful than the genuine stone, but it has a tendeney to decomposition and does not retain luster. The diamond mines of Brazil were first opened in 1727. It is estimated that since that time they have produced at least two tons of diamonds. In England, a stone weighing one carat and of the purest water is worth, when cut and polished, about $60. The dealers in rough stóncs acquire the habit of distinguishing the water of a rough stone by simply brcathing upon L. Among the historie diamonds, the llajahweighed ;67 carats, and the GreatMogul 280. Before it was cut the latter weighed 900 carats. From tho comppsition of the diamond we sec what costly things Nature makes from common material. All the diamond fields of the world are nol worth the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. A ruby of five carats is doublé the value of a diamond of that size, and one of ten carats is worth three times as much as a diamond of corresponding size. A perfect ruby is the rarest of all stones. llubies are often imitated with real stones, the most common being spinal. But it is not diffleult to distinguish the imitation, as the ruby is the only stone having a pigeon blooc color Another precious stone is the sapphire, whioh is like the ruby, witl: tho exception of the color. He hac seen a small stone which was ruby on one side and sapphire on the other. The emerald is a deep green, the deeper the botter. It loses no brillianey in an artificial light, but its color may be expelled by a gentle heat. Most of our emeralds come from New Granada, and will always have flaws. In imitations it is not the hardness noi the color that is sought, so much as the flaw. The first cve-classes were made