Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/578

 570 EMERY load every word with vital meaning. But the great characteristic of Mr. Emerson's intellect is the perception and sentiment of beauty. So strong is this, that he accepts nothing in life that is morbid, uncomely, haggard, or ghastly. The fact that an opinion depresses, instead of invig- orating, is with him a sufficient reason for its re- jection. His observation, his wit, his reason, his imagination, his style, all obey the control- ling sense of beauty, which is at the heart of his nature, and instinctively avoid the ugly and the base. Those portions of Mr. Emerson's writings which relate to philosophy and reli- gion may be considered as fragmentary contribu- tions to the "Philosophy of the Infinite." He has no system, and indeed system in his mind is associated with charlatanism. His largest generalization is "Existence." On this inscru- table theme his conceptions vary with his moods and experience. Sometimes it seems to be man who parts with his personality in being united to God ; sometimes it seems to be God who is impersonal, and who comes to person- ality only in man ; and the real obscurity or vacillation of his metaphysical ideas is in- creased by the vivid and positive concrete forms in which they are successively clothed. EMERY, an impure, granular variety of co- rundum, intimately mixed with hematite or with magnetic iron ore. It has the appearance of fine-grained iron ore, for which it was long mistaken. Often the crystals of corundum are separable by washing. Its extreme hardness, derived from the corundum, and the ease with which it is obtained in large quantities, have led to its extensive use in the arts, for grinding and polishing hard stones, metals, and glass. Some of the localities from which it is obtained in the Grecian archipelago, and in the vicinity of Smyrna and ancient Ephesus in Asia Minor, were probably known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, as the use of a substance of this nature seems to have been required by the lapi- daries of Magnesia, Ephesus, Tralles, and Tyre. In later times the island of Naxos in the archi- pelago has furnished all the supplies of com- merce, the mineral being shipped from the port of Smyrna, and known by the name of Smyrna emery. From 1835 to 1846 the trade in emery was a monopoly granted by the Greek government to an English merchant, who so regulated the supply as to raise the price from its former rate of $40 a ton to about $140. This monopoly was broken up and the whole trade changed in consequence of the discoveries of Dr. J. Lawrence Smith of the United States, who in the course of his explorations in the service of the Porte discovered in 1847 a num- ber of localities of the mineral belonging both to the Turkish and Greek governments. By an arrangement with the former, operations were commenced in the same year at some of the localities and afterward extended to others, so that the price has since been reduced to $50 a ton. At the Juma Dagh, 12 m. E. of the ruins of Ephesus, Dr. Smith found the emery scattered about upon the summit in loose pieces of all sizes up to masses of sev- eral tons weight. The rock to which it be- longs is a bluish metamorphic marble, reposing upon mica slate and gneiss. In this rock the mineral is found in nodules and in amorphous masses, some of which are several yards in length and breadth, and of the weight of 30 to 40 tons. The structure of this rock is compact and tolerably regular, but the surface presents a granular appearance. Unless trav- ersed by fissures, the rock is broken with great difficulty, and attempts to drill it are made in vain from its wear upon the tools. As the transportation from the quarries is only on the backs of camels or horses, many of the heavier masses are necessarily left behind. Some of the blocks, however, yield to the ham- mer after being exposed for some hours to the action of fire. The color of the powder varies from dark gray to black ; but its shade has no relation to its hardness, and is con- sequently no index of the value of the article. The relative degrees of hardness of different samples were determined by Dr. Smith by col- lecting the powder just coarse enough to pass through a sieve of 400 holes to the inch, and with weighed samples of this rubbing little test plates of glass till they ceased to be further re- duced. The rubber was the smooth bottom surface of an agate mortar. The loss in weight experienced by the glass plates gave the relative values of the samples of emery. On this plan Dr. Smith prepared a table exhibiting the differ- ent degrees of hardness ; and making use of sapphire of Ceylon as the standard of compari- son, the hardness of which he called 100, and the effective wear of which upon glass was equal to about four fifths of its own weight, that of the best emery was about one half of its weight. This table, to which were appended the results of the analyses of many samples of the mine- ral made by Dr. Smith, was published in the elaborate articles which he furnished to the "American Journal of Science," second series, vols. x. and xi. The hardness of the sapphire as rated upon the mineralogical scale is 9, next to the diamond, which is 10. That of emery is not necessarily indicated by the proportion of alumina, for a part of this may be in combina- tion with the silica. It seems to vary with the water present, those samples containing the least water being the hardest. In 1855 the annual production of emery was 2,000 tons of Naxos stone and 1,600 tons of Turkish. The whole business was concentrated in the hands of Mr. Abbott, who held the contract with the Greek government, extending for ten years, and had purchased the Turkish firman, unlimited in time, for the annual payment of $55,000. An ar- rangement was entered into with the house of Messrs. John Taylor and sons of England to employ a capital of 120,000 in this business, and supply the emery either in the stone or powder to all parts of the world, with the guaranty of its being free from adulterations,