Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/221

Rh office, and we read it together. It was long and full.

Our crystals were not emeralds, not rubies. They were s. The mineral was a rare one. Early in the eighteenth century, some experiments had been made before the French Academy, showing the wonderful electric properties of the stone, and for a few years considerable interest had been taken in the subject. But, owing to the scarcity of the gems, the investigations had not been continued, and even at the present day the stone was almost unknown, except to professional mineralogists.

Commercially, the gem had no fixed value. A superb group of them, which had been presented to the British Ambassador to the Burmese Empire, in 1795, and was now in the British Museum, had been valued at one thousand pounds sterling. The deep red variety, when clear and flawless, would command the price of rubies. It had been surmised that the famous ruby in one of the diadems of the Russian crown jewels was a species of tourmaline. The Professor concluded his kind letter by heartily congratulating us on our discovery, and thanking us, in the name of the college, for the specimens we had sent. He also offered to put us in communication with some amateur collectors in Europe, if we wished to dispose of the remaining crystals. As these were the only ones which had been discovered in America, he believed that they would be largely sought after.