Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/845

Rh The series of spinels is well chosen and varicolored: it consists of a long two-carat stone of smoky-blue color; an oblong almandine-colored stone of three carats, an inky stone of one and a half carat, a half-carat ruby spinel of fair color, a pretty rubicelle of three quarters of a carat, and a suite of crystals of the ruby-colored spinel from Ceylon and Hurinah. We have also a cut Alexandrite (so called after the Czar Alexander I), from the original Russian locality. This is of fair color, but the wonderful Ceylonese gems of recent years have really given to this phenomenal variety of chrysoberyl, which changes from green to red under artificial light, its present high rank among gems. There is a six-carat typical chrysoberyl, finely cut (the chrysolite of the jeweler), truly, as the name indicates, golden beryl, and a dark-green one of that shade repeatedly sold as Alexandrite, though it does not change color by artificial light. A set of seven rough fragments from Brazil is instructive by comparison.

Among the beryls we have a flawed emerald of ten carats, that well illustrates the typical color, as does a pear-shaped drop of about the same weight and quality. There is also a crystal that has been in the institution for many years, labeled from New Mexico. It is evidently not from that locality, for no other such occurrence is on record, and we must suspect that the label is a misnomer, since the crystal has unmistakable signs of Muso (New Granada) origin. An emerald crystal two inches long, one of a series of minerals brought by Professor J. D. Dana from Peru when with the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, is historically interesting. It was purchased by him in the streets of Callao. In the same series are two good cut beryls, one six carats in weight, of a light-green color, another one-carat light-blue one from Royalston, Massachusetts, and perhaps the finest specimen ever found, at the Portland (Connecticut) quarries, fifteen carats in weight, and of such a rich, deep sea-blue color as almost to rival in splendor the matchless three-carat Brazilian blue-stone that is in the same case.

A fine blue crystal from Mourne Mountain, Ireland, is interesting for its locality and deep color. Stoneham, Maine, has contributed a two-carat white cut stone and a similar fragment; while Siberia is represented only by a common white stone of about six carats' weight.

Next comes a series of the emerald-yellow and yellowish-green varieties of spodumene (variety Hiddenite), embracing lithia emerald in the rough, and three cut stones of the same, weighing from a quarter to three-quarters of a carat, and varying in color from green to yellowish-green, from Stony Point, North Carolina; also a quarter-carat light-yellow and a one-carat golden-yellow spodumene of the variety resembling chrysoberyl, described by Pisani, of Paris, in "Comptes Rendus" for 1877, from Brazil. The white cut phenakite of three carats' weight, from Russia, is of rare occurrence, but has recently been found at two localities in Colorado.