What the Stones Are
On the basis of beauty, stones cannot be divided into precious and semiprecious for, from stone to stone, there is continuous range of color and glow. Nor indeed can price be the one criterion, for here many elements produce variety. Although the term “gem of the first water” is reserved for the flawless blue-white diamond, as the carats of the single stone increase the flawless ruby and the emerald become even more costly; and varieties and special specimens of other stones, such as the fire opal and imperial jade, move up into comparable range. For certain individuals, of course, a particular stone will have associations of sentiment that render it more precious—in the nontechnical sense—than another stone in the category of “precious.” It is, then, tradition rather than any inherent value that sets a secondary label, “semiprecious,” on all but five of the stones used for human adornment. Let us call these five the gems, to distinguish them from the other stones.
The Gems
There is no doubt that the five gems—diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and pearl—have grown more fully than all others into our ways of living. They have become, as I shall indicate in this chapter, adornments not only of our persons but of our speech and writing. They are used not only in figures of jewelry but in figures of speech, to express human beauty, or eminence, or virtue. The poet and the orator, as well as the monarch and the lover, have utilized the glamour of the gem.
Diamond
Supreme in human imagination is the diamond, the hardest of all stones. The word diamond captures this significance, for it is from Greek adamas, meaning unconquerable, the tameless stone.
The diamond is also the only gem that is entirely composed of a single element. It is carbon, which also appears in its more common and less costly forms as soot, jet, and coal. The diamond is pure carbon crystallized in regular octahedrons, eight-sided figures.
For a long time, one word was used to mean both the diamond and the lodestone, the natural magnet. In French today, the gem is diamant, and the magnet is aimant—which also means loving. Perhaps the word changed because the natural magnet, attracting things to it, was thought of as “the loving stone.” The diamond is the beloved stone.
Most diamonds at their best are colorless, with perhaps a bluish glow. They may also be blue, green, violet, less often red—and black. The black diamond is usually unwanted for jewelry, but is used by lapidaries and others for cutting, grinding, and polishing hard stones.
If a jeweler speaks of a Matura diamond or a Ceylon diamond, he is using an old trade name for a zircon. Similarly, a Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Quebec, or California diamond is likely to be an attractive piece of rock crystal.
True diamonds were known in Asia at least as far back as 900 B.C. India was the homeland of the gem for many years. The best stones in the sixteenth century were those cut in Hyderabad, India, in the famed city of Golconda. Rich findings were made about 1720 in Brazil; in Borneo in 1738; elsewhere, diamonds were discovered in less significant amounts. But by far the richest hoards were unearthed in 1867 in South Africa, which is still the world’s greatest source of diamonds.
Although the lozenge is the characteristic shape of its crystal surface, the rough diamond stone is found in many shapes and cut into great variety. Because of the tears that the great tragic actress Sarah Bernhardt wrung from the audiences at his melodramas, Victor Hugo presented her with a tear-shaped diamond.
Among the many literary references to the diamond, the Elizabethan playwrights were particularly fond of the expression “diamond cut diamond”, meaning in that aristocratic age, when great man matched with great. In the more democratic nineteenth century, particularly with regard to those most democratic of spirits, the pioneers—such as the Americans opening up the West—it became popular to speak of an uncouth, unpolished but fundamentally fine fellow as “a diamond in the rough.”
Lovers at all times have linked this most brilliant of stones with their fair one’s sparkling eyes. One said that, wherever he went in the world, he found only his beloved:
There are several sayings which, though they refer to the diamond, by indirection speak of mankind. Thus there is a warning to the person who is heedless of dress or decor, or of the furnishing of office or home, in the remark: “A fine diamond may be ill set.” There is, on the other hand, a challenge to pretense, or perhaps a warning to a person about to select an employee—or a mate—in the Chinese proverb: “A diamond with a flaw is better than a perfect pebble.”
Ruby
The ruby is a variety of corundum. The Sanskrit word kuruvinda was limited to the ruby, but we today use the word corundum to mean any form of aluminum oxide, chemically Al₂O₃. Corundum is next in hardness (though far inferior) to the diamond, and a hard granular form of it is used in grinding and polishing. In its pure, transparent form it is, according to its color, the ruby, the sapphire, the Oriental amethyst, or the Oriental topaz.
The Latin word ruber means red, and the crystalline corundum that is a ruby takes shades from pale rose-pink to a deep crimson that borders on the purple. The color is determined by the nature of the oxide, and the gem sometimes has a light silken sheen. A flawless deep red ruby is one of the rarest and most costly of gems.
Because of its great value, the ruby has often been used as a term of comparison for human worth, implying the highest excellence. The Scottish poet William Dunbar used it in pious thought: “Hail, redolent ruby, rich and radious! Hail, Mother of God!”
Among precious rubies, greatly desired is the star ruby, a gem so flawed that it catches the light as a sun with six out-shooting rays. “The sun is fair,” said the poet Drummond of Hawthorne on a fine summer’s morning, “when he with crimson crown and flaming rubies leaves his eastern bed.” The star ruby, with its three crossbars making six rays of light, has been thought by these lines of light to signify Faith, Hope, Charity, Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Thus it is doubly prized, for its good fortune and for its beauty.
The deep rubies of “pigeon’s blood” or ox-blood red come from Burma; those from Siam may be purplish brown; from Ceylon, more probably pink; a Brazilian ruby, a topaz; a Siberian ruby, a tourmaline; and a Balas ruby, a spinel.
Most frequent of all comparisons with gems are references to the “ruby lips” of beauty. Close after these come allusions to the rich red of wine, as when Fitzgerald tells us, in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
Robert Herrick, the poet of youth and springtime, who advises us to enjoy lovely things while they are here—“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”—in a note of more solemn warning says to a fair maid:
What the maiden answered is not on record, but it is sadly pleasant to think, three hundred years later, that somewhere today that ruby is still beautiful and still enjoyed.
Sapphire
Sapphire is the current form of a Sanskrit word meaning dear to Saturn, an olden god whose reign was regarded as the golden age. The stone has been known since earliest times, although what the ancients called sapphire was probably the lapis lazuli, our sapphire being called by them the hyacinth. It is hard to tell, however, just what gem is intended when in the Song of Songs the Queen of Sheba sings of Solomon, her beloved: “His hands are as gold rings set with beryl; his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.”
Our sapphire is a bluish transparent variety of native crystalline aluminum oxide, the same corundum that when it is red we call a ruby. The sapphire may be sky blue or cornflower blue, and shade through the lighter hues to an almost colorless stone, called white or water sapphire.
The sapphire is often used as a figure for the stars or for blue eyes: “Those eyes, those sparkling sapphires of delight”... “Now glowed the firmament with living sapphires.” This last line is by Milton, from Paradise Lost, which he dictated to his daughters when he was blind. The poet Gray pictures Milton as becoming blinded by his great vision:
While the sapphire at its best still captures the blue of a cloudless sky, it brings with it today a vision of more serene beauty.
Emerald
The emerald is the most precious of the large beryl group of stones. It has been deemed precious from ancient times. Cleopatra’s emerald mines are still being worked. A flawless deep green emerald of good size is extremely rare. Such a gem, normally, is table cut. The emerald also may be pierced for use as a bead, or engraved. In Egypt, the usual carving was a scarab—Cleopatra possessed one; in India, the carving often was a god.
The word emerald, before the sixteenth century, was esmeraldus and smaragdus; the Sanskrit word for the gem was marakta. As recently as the last century, Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up the chief sensuous impressions of the Orient: “Color, taste, and smell: smaragdus, sugar, and musk.”
There are few colors at once as striking and as restful as the green of an emerald. It seems to have the depths of the pure rays in a calm ocean. Coleridge in The Ancient Mariner used it for another form of the ever-changing waters:
Tennyson used it for the widespread carpet of the land.
In a lighter vein, it has been used to suggest the color of unripe fruit, as in Eugene Field’s verses on the peach:
The green of the emerald makes it, in many minds, the most beautiful of colored gems.
Pearl
The pearl is the only one of the five gems that is the product of life. It gives body to the eternal paradox that out of evil springs good; out of deformity, beauty. For these reasons, the pearl is most frequently, of all gems, woven into symbols of man’s activity. “Honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house,” said Shakespeare, “as your pearl in a foul oyster.”
A pearl, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, is a nacreous concretion formed within the shell of various bivalve molluscs around some foreign substance (i.e., a grain of sand), composed of filmy layers of carbonate of lime interstratified with animal membrane.
Trying to isolate the intruding irritant, the oyster secretes a sticky fluid. The fluid hardens, another layer of it is secreted, and the pearl grows. The genuine pearl oyster is the meleagrina margaritifera. Margaritifera means pearl-bearing from which comes the name Margaret meaning pearl. Other molluscs may also form pearls, though not usually the varieties served in the months with an “R”.
Freshwater pearls come from mussels, of the kind called unionidae. Unionem is the Latin word for pearl—also for onion, which like the pearl is made up of layer upon layer. Mary Queen of Scots had a necklace of fifty-two graduated pearls, all of them fetched out of Scottish rivers.
Pearls are prized because of the beautiful lustre that glows upon them, pink or even bluish-grey, an iridescence over the basic white. Rarest are the large black pearls, which make a beautiful center drop on a brooch or a necklace. The pearl is hard and smooth in texture, beautiful to see and pleasant to feel.
The usual shapes in which a pearl grows are round, button, pear, and baroque (which in this use merely means irregular). The round pearls are used mainly for necklaces, which must be threaded in silk or plastic or other such material; any metal may darken and dull the beauty of a pearl. Button pearls are used in earclips, studs, brooches and rings. Pear-shaped pearls are attractive as pendants. The use of baroque pearls depends upon their shape and size.
Pearls are assorted and matched with great care, according to their size, shape, and color. The matching of a string of pearls may be a quest of twenty years. Sometimes a jeweler will hold the pearls until he has a matched necklace, graduated or of equal size; but it is also a challenge to a woman who enjoys jewels to buy a few pearls she can wear in various ways while watching for enough of their peers to form a string.
The lustrous inside of the oyster shell, formed of the same material as the gem, is called mother of pearl. A blister pearl is a flattish excrescence that, instead of being inside the soft oyster, adheres to the shell; it may be detached and used. Seed pearls are very tiny pearls, weighing less than a quarter of a grain.
For ages one of the most highly prized and priced of gems, the pearl has become less costly not because of changing taste or of successful simulation, but because man has learned the secret of the stimulation of the oyster to make it create a pearl. The best natural pearls come from the Persian gulf and the waters of Australia; but it is the Japanese who have most fully developed the technique of inserting a foreign body in the oyster, so that it then carries on, under its own living power, the process of making a real—but what is called a cultured—pearl. Man proposes and the oyster disposes.
From the “gates of pearl” through which Saint Peter allows the elect to enter Heaven, to the guardians—“of Orient pearl a double row”—of the smiling mouth, the pearl has been caught into proverb and poem. At the beginning of this century, the pearl figured in a popular song:
For some reason, all of Shakespeare’s references to the pearl are linked with sadness. The song in The Tempest tells:
And it is after Othello has killed his faithful wife Desdemona and has discovered that his clouding suspicions were untrue, that he calls himself:
As far back as the Bible a thing of supreme quality was referred to as a pearl of great price; and the same book (Matthew) issues the famous warning: “Neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”
In other ways the pearl has been used as a symbol. The poet Swinburne, in sentimental mood, exclaimed:
The rarity of the stone, and the difficult task of the pearl-diver, are used symbolically in an epigram by Dryden:
The American poet, William Russell Lowell (father of the Supreme Court Justice of the same name), wrote in his copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
Other Stones
The other stones, though less esteemed in lore and letters, have many claims to beauty. One shining specimen may adorn a jewel; or several of a kind, or combinations of various stones, may create effects that rival those of the gems. The four native stones among the five gems are usually translucent, while most of the other stones are opaque. A transparent or translucent stone, if it is cut as a prism or if its crystalline structure is right, may break light into rainbow hues, and, catching these rays, may shoot them around in varying interplays of sparkle and color. The opaque stones, on the other hand, often smooth of surface, are colored in ways that seem to snare the light and send it out with added power and color. Special characteristics add to the beauty of many of these stones, the main varieties of which we shall now glance at, in alphabetical order.
Agate
The agate is a variety of chalcedony. It is named from the river Achates, in Sicily. A hard stone, of striped or cloudy coloring, it is often yellow or tawny brown. Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet uses the agate in a ring to indicate the size of Queen Mab, who—before Freud brought us other fancies—was the bringer of dreams:
In her coach, Queen Mab gallops by night
Alexandrite
The stone alexandrite was given its name from Alexander II (1818-1881), Czar of all the Russias, in whose realm it was found. It is a variety of chrysoberyl, containing chromium. It has the interesting quality of being dark green in daylight, but under artificial illumination glowing a brilliant red. These were the national colors of Russia, the green standing for felicity, the red for humanity.
Amethyst
The amethyst is a variety of quartz—often called the queen of quartz—purple or violet in color. It is one of the earliest stones found in jewelry and has been used in every period. It is especially attractive in combination with gold and pearls.
People as early as the Greeks have used the amethyst as a talisman against intoxication. In 1502, Camilli Leonardi observed that the amethyst protected the mild drinker and cautioned its wearer against excess; but when its warnings were unheeded, the stone grew wan and died. There is no question, as I can testify from my direct observation, that continuing drunkenness of its wearer will cause an amethyst (like a person) to grow dull.
A motion picture star, well known all over the world—her life recorded in a major film—some time ago was in quest of an unusual necklace. At the time, I was in Hollywood as jewelry consultant to a motion picture company. As I happened to be staying at the same hotel as this actress, we often went to the studio together, and we became rather friendly. When she mentioned to me that she had been looking for a necklace that was distinctive and personalized, I told her that her complexion and hair coloring made it desirable—in my mind, almost mandatory—for her to have the jewel made of deep purple Uruguayan amethysts combined with diamonds. That night I made a sketch of such a jewel, and sent it to her the next morning. She was enchanted. So was the Hollywood jeweler who was entrusted with the making of the necklace from my design, for it was a great success, the talk of the season in the movie colony.
What the jeweler did not tell me—what perhaps he did not know, as neither did I—was that this glamorous star, with an angelic face and a skin the poet Byron might despair of describing, used to hide away once a month or more and drink herself into complete intoxication. We did not know, but the amethysts did. Within a year the deep velvety purple had faded; the stones were pale, and they had lost their lustre. The warning of the amethysts had gone unheeded.
Aquamarine
The aquamarine is a pale, transparent, bluish-green variety of beryl. Being of much the same chemical composition as the emerald, it is sometimes called blue emerald. Although it is not a rare stone, when step cut the aquamarine has a pleasant glow, and may be combined with diamonds to make a distinctive jewel.
Beryl
Beryl is, chemically, a silicate of aluminum and glucinum, Be₃Al₂(SiO₃)₆. It usually forms in hexagonal crystals. When there is also in the stone some oxide of chromium, it becomes a bright or a deep green: this is the emerald.
The word beryl covers a large number of hard and lustrous stones. At first it was applied to clear crystals; thus in the fifteenth century we find references to “water clear as beryl.” A pale bluish-green variety of beryl is the aquamarine. A yellow variety is the chrysoberyl (chrysos is the Greek word for gold).
Carnelian
The carnelian was originally the cornelian. Because of its flesh color, the name was changed under the influence of the Latin word for flesh, carnem. Carnelian is a red variety of chalcedony.
Cat’s-eye
There are two varieties of the cat’s-eye, equally effective against evil spirits. The stone may be either olive green, or reddish brown. The most attractive shades are bamboo and moss green. The distinguishing feature of the stone is that it seems to have a horizontal slit that sends back a white band of light, moving with the stone, and resembling the gleam in the baleful eye of a cat. Other appropriately sinister colorings are sometimes called tiger’s-eye and hawk’s-eye. The Oriental cat’s-eye is a mineral of the chrysoberyl group; the Occidental, somewhat less glinting, is a variety of quartz.
The cat’s-eye, of course, is in wide repute for the power it confers of seeing in the dark. Thus it is an excellent stone for hunters. But it proves similarly effective in mental darkness, providing the power for seeing through the schemes of connivers. Wearing a cat’s-eye may thus save one from becoming a cat’s-paw. I met a detective recently who was wearing a superb hawk’s-eye ring; he told me he had just received notice of his promotion, “with distinction,” to the rank of captain.
Chalcedony
Chalcedony is the name of a large group of stones, variously colored, consisting mainly of non-crystal quartz. It has the lustre of wax. Chalcedony has been known from early times and is mentioned in the Bible. Among the stones belonging to this group are agate, carnelian, chrysoprase, jasper, onyx, and sard.
Chrysoberyl
The various stones beginning with chrys (Greek for gold) should in the main be yellow. Chrysoberyl is a yellowish, sometimes slightly greenish, mineral, beryllium aluminate, chemically Be Al₂O₄. It has been used for adornment since ancient times.
Chrysolite
This is a rather common yellow silicate of magnesium and iron, of granular structure. When, as sometimes occurs, it is greenish in tint, it is called olivine by mineralogists, but when used for adornment jewelers call it peridot.
Chrysolite is mentioned as one of the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem prophesied in Revelations. Shakespeare has Othello, wrought with agony over his beloved Desdemona whom he believes unfaithful, exclaim:
There is indeed beauty in an entire and perfect chrysolite.
Chrysoprase
Gold touched with leek (prason is the Greek word for leek) marks the color of the chrysoprase. It is a light green quartz, a variety of chalcedony. As chrysoprasus, it is listed in the King James Bible as the tenth foundation stone of the New Jerusalem.
Citrine
Named from the citrus family, citrine is a lemon-yellow variety of quartz. When clear, it may be used as becomingly as topaz.
Coral
Coral is a fairly hard substance, mainly calcium carbonate, made up of the skeletons of myriads of marine animals called polyps. These skeletons, attached to one another, through the centuries have formed shelves in the ocean, or shaped themselves as atolls and far-extending reefs. Coral may be in many colors, white, black, yellow, blue, and—most popular in jewelry—shades of pink and red. The reddish shades, the Greeks inform us, are dyed by the blood of the Gorgon Medusa, whose snake-haired head, lopped off by Perseus, dripped its gore into the sea as he laid it by to wash his hands. Scientists inform us the red is produced by the presence of iron oxide.
The ancient Romans placed coral on cradles, to protect the babe against the ills of infancy, especially teething. Even today, Italian peasants use it as a charm against sterility, or in the form of a little bell the wind might make tinkle to drive off evil spirits. If one has ever knocked wood, one might place on the babe a ring or a trinket of coral.
References to the beloved one’s coral lips were so frequent in Renaissance poetry that Shakespeare in revulsion wrote his Sonnet 130:
A century later another playwright, William Congreve, also used the image in a passage of scorn, after describing the physical allure of a great beauty:
How true love grows through a lifetime by tiny, unnoticed moments is beautifully pictured—to give an instance of a happier use of a coral image—by the nineteenth-century poet Coventry Patmore:
Garnet
The garnet is a hard glass-like silicate mineral. It is found in many colors: green, yellow, orange, pink and black. When it is a deep, translucent red, it can be used to form a beautiful jewel. Its name is a corruption of granate, seeded, as also in the pomegranate, the seed-apple.
The garnet is sometimes cut faceted. The deep red, cabochon cut is sometimes called a carbuncle, which means glowing coal. In trade terms, the pyrope garnet is a deep blood red; the almandine garnet a violet red. The Adelaide, Cape and Colorado “rubies” all are garnets.
Hyacinth
The color of the flower and the stone have given note to the name hyacinth. In ancient times, the word was probably used to designate what we call the sapphire. Today it is applied to any of the reddish or purplish varieties of the garnet, topaz, or zircon.
Jacinth
Jacinth is really another form of the word hyacinth. It is used, now, especially to denote a reddish orange variety of zircon. The jacinth was a favorite jewel of ancient times, its mention ranging from the Bible to the Thousand and One Nights.
Jade
Two silicates of lime and magnesium are called jade. One, the true jade, is a complex silicate also called jadeite. It is a tough substance, usually green or white, and somewhat translucent. The other, less valuable form, called nephrite, occurs in other colors.
Found in Burma and India, also in Mexico and Central America, jade did not enter early into western literature; English mentions of jade usually refer to the horse.
The word jade is from the Spanish piedra de yjada, stone of the side. It is named from the belief that the stone counteracted pains in the sides and kidneys. And the word nephrite is from Greek nephros, kidney. Chinese women, indeed, clutched a piece of jade tightly in their hands during childbirth. They had a double purpose in this: the stone, being an effective charm, lessened their labor pains; and, being a symbol of aristocracy, it ensured the male infant high rank and the female a successful marriage. Mandarins, though not for the same reasons, sometimes “spiked” their rice wine with powdered jade.
A piece of the deep green stone called imperial jade is one of the most beautiful stones to look upon, and one of the most pleasant to touch. It combines superbly with diamonds to create handsome jewels.
Jasper
Jasper was a stone treasured in antiquity. Although Biblical references indicate a greenish stone, the jasper we know today is usually reddish, yellow, or brown, in mottled colors. It is an opaque variety of quartz.
The jasper was sometimes used as a symbol of perfection. Thus the Scot poet William Dunbar, about 1525, hailed the growing capital of England:
One might suspect Dunbar of bringing in the jasper to chime with the jocundity, were it not more likely that he brought in the jocundity to chime with the jasper!
Jet
This stone, which gives its name to its color, a shiny dark black, might be called kissing kin to the diamond. It is a kind of lignite, one of the forms of pure carbon, differing from coal and diamond only in the arrangement of the molecules. It is an intense black in color but very soft.
The name jet is from the Greek gagates, which indicates that it comes from Gagas, a town and a river of Lycia in Asia Minor. Jet, however, was known also to the ancient Celts, who carved it.
Although its color has made it popular mainly for religious and especially (in the western world) for mourning motifs, jet has a bright glow upon its black that can be effective in earclips and other jewel forms.
Kunzite
Named for the American gem expert George F. Kunz (1856—1932), kunzite is a stone of attractive lilac crystals. It is a transparent variety of spodumene which is a crystalline mineral, lithium aluminum silicate, chemically Li Al (Si O₃)₂. Spodumene is usually yellow or light green; in its more delicate shadings, used for ornament, it is now called kunzite.
Lapis Lazuli
Known from earliest times, and in high repute as an ornamental stone, lapis lazuli is a mixture of various minerals. It is azure blue and opaque, usually with tiny golden flecks. The name means the azure stone.
Some old-time customs and cures, persisting in spite of superior smiles and “scientific” derision, have been found to incorporate materials which modern medicine has in its time welcomed into the pharmacopoeia, the checkbook of current remedies. In ancient times, lapis lazuli was used as a “charm” against bleeding of the nose, against inflammation of the eyes, against any kind of hemorrhage. The Egyptians prescribed lapis lazuli 4,000 years before chemists noted the astringent qualities of copper oxide—which is what gives the golden flecks to lapis lazuli.
Malachite
Malachite is a basic copper carbonate, chemically CuCO₃Cu(OH)₂. It can be highly polished and takes its name from the green color of the leaves of the mallow plant, the marsh variety of which gives its name to a popular candy. The stone is used for small boxes and other decorative pieces; well polished, it makes an attractive ring.
Moonstone
Moonstone is a milky-white translucent variety of feldspar, with a pearly lustre.
Feldspar (also felspar, meaning spar of the field) is any of a group of crystalline minerals, made up mainly of aluminum silicates. They are glassy and moderately hard, and are found among igneous rocks. Spar is the name of various shiny materials that break off easily, in chips or flakes. Few of these varieties are used in ornaments, but the even milk-white tone of a good moonstone makes it effective in jewels.
Onyx
Named, because of its pale color, from the Greek word for nail, onyx is a variety of agate. It consists of alternate layers of different colored stone, as can be seen around the edge; this makes it prized for carving, especially in cameos.
Opal
The opal was represented in such variety in early times that the word upala was the general Sanskrit term for a precious stone. The opal comprises a large group of vitreous, translucent silicas, possessing the property of refracting light and then reflecting it in a play of colors. Silica is a dioxide of silicon, chemically Si O₂, a hard glassy mineral that includes quartz and sand as well as opal. According as the compound includes iron, magnesium or other elements, the color of the stone varies.
The best opals are the result of a flaw in their formation. Being hydrated silicas, they were at first a sort of semi-liquid, jellified substance; as this hardened, cracks and fissures were created by unevenness in the material and in the speed of the hardening. These tiny spaces trapped air or moisture, and it is this that produces the phenomenon of refraction and reflection of light and gives the colorings and variations known as opalescence. The play of light is at its best when the stone is cut cabochon, except for the fire opal, which is faceted.
There are three chief varieties of opal. The common or white opal has a cloudy-white background, with pastel patches that often give it a veritable sunrise glow. The black opal has actually a very dark green background, in which there are deep pools of blue and green with patches of flame. Rare, and most magnificent, is the fire opal, which seems almost transparent, its body of smooth reddish orange shooting forth into flame.
The opal is a delicate stone. It may be damaged by heat. It absorbs grease, and may thus become dull. The outstanding and valued feature of the stone is its opalescence. This creates a constantly changing, almost kaleidoscopic play of lights. It is this variability that gives point to the reference in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy garment of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.”
Peridot
The peridot, a yellowish-green variety of chrysolite, was popular in early England. It fell from favor but was reintroduced from France in the seventeenth century. It is a beautiful stone, often as large as 30 carats, and again growing in favor.
Quartz
Quartz is one of the silicas, chemically Si O₂, as is the opal. It is abundant as a colorless, transparent substance; it also appears as a brilliant crystal. The name quartz is from the German zwerg, meaning dwarf. Similarly cobalt and nickel are from German words for sprites, the gnomes being little creatures that work the mine of the gods.
In its crystalline form quartz includes amethyst, cairngorm, citrine, quartz cat’s-eye, rock crystal, and rose quartz. Another main group in the quartz family is chalcedony, which includes agate, bloodstone, carnelian, jasper, moss agate, onyx, sard, and sardonyx. These stones are used for beads for carving cameos and intaglios.
Sard
Sard is a very hard, deep orange-red variety of chalcedony. Its name rises from the fact that it originally came from Sardis in Asia Minor.
Sardonyx
Sardonyx is a variety of onyx in which the alternating layers are of white chalcedony and sard. It can be cut into beautiful cameos.
The sardonyx is not to be confused with the sardonics, known for their scornful smile. The latter have no connection with the powers of the stone; they derive their name from the plant of Sardinia, the island off Italy. The plant, we are told, was poisonous, and made its victims sneer while dying. More scientific botanical tales aver that the plant was bitter, so that its taste at once produced contortions of the mouth. In either event, the bitter, superior smile of the sardonic comes from another part of the world than the peaceful sardonyx stone of Sardis, Asia Minor.
Spinel
Spinel is so called, little spine, from the shape of its crystals. It is a hard mineral, composed mainly of oxide of aluminum, with iron or magnesium. The proportions of the metals determine the color, which ranges from rose pink through green, blue, and purple, to black. The red variety, rare and costly, is sometimes called a spinel ruby. It is also known as a balas ruby, from Arabian balakhsh, from the Persian province of Balakhshan, where spinels from pink to orange have long been found.
Topaz
The topaz ranges widely in color, according as other substances are present in the complex aluminum silicate that is its basis, chemically Al₂Si O₄F₂. It is transparent, crystalline, and may be white, pale blue, or pale green; but the yellow shade (produced by the presence of fluorine) is preferred for use in a jewel. It often develops its crystals in large clusters; the National Museum in Washington has one weighing 153 pounds.
Brazilian topaz is genuine topaz. Oriental topaz, however, is a yellowish crystalline corundum; Occidental topaz, a yellow quartz, citrine. Topazolite is a yellow variety of garnet.
The topaz is mentioned in the Bible as the ninth foundation stone of the New Jerusalem. It has not entered greatly into literature, being an undramatic stone, and is not usually at its best when combined with others; but it can be so fashioned as to display a serene and quiet beauty.
Tourmaline
The tourmaline is any of a variety of complex silicoborates, formed into a brittle mineral, crystalline stone. It was originally found in Ceylon, first being brought to the West in the eighteenth century. The surface of the stone has a vitreous lustre. A black, opaque variety is called schorl; a blue variety, indicolite; a red, rubellite. The tourmaline is most attractive, and most frequently chosen for jewels, in a colorless transparent or translucent variety, and in deep green.
Turquoise
The turquoise was originally found in Persia, where it is still a favorite and lucky stone. It was also found along the Sinai Peninsula; but it was transported to the West by way of Turkey, whence its name, the Turkish stone. It is also found in the western United States and, in its rare crystalline form, in Virginia.
The turquoise is a hydrous phosphate of aluminum, with a little copper or iron determining its color, from sky blue to greenish grey. It is best when a rich green-blue. The stone is rather soft and is cut cabochon. Like the opal, it absorbs grease and dirt and may grow dull. Over-exposure to strong light will cause it to fade.
There may often be several hues in the one turquoise; it is another stone that can be wrought into parures of quiet beauty.
Zircon
Zircon is really a silicate of zirconium, an element discovered by Martin Klaproth. Zircon is chemically Zr Si O₄, a mineral occurring in tetragonal crystals. Though it is found in many colors—yellow, brown, red, pastels of green and blue—the colorless and transparent varieties are in demand for jewels. The brown zircon, heated, turns first blue, then colorless. Without the diamond hardness and full sparkle, the colorless zircon more nearly approaches the radiance of the diamond than any other stone.
The word zircon is from the Arabic zarqun, meaning cinnabar, from Persian zar, meaning gold, and this indicates the ancients’ favorite colors of the stone. It is also called the jargon or jargoon. A red zircon is also known as a hyacinth.