FACTS ABOUT PRECIOUS STONES.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5092, 13 May 1885, Page 2

FACTS ABOUT PRECIOUS STONES.

There is in Paris a diamond so hard that, the usual process for cutting and polishing made no impression upon it. The black diamond is mostly used for tools. In Russia it is broken into flakei, polished, and worn ag.court mourning. The historic diamonds hare no more lustre than a piece of glass. The sham diamond is more beautiful than the genuine stone, but it has a tendency :to decomposition, and does not retain lustre. : > .--., „

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 sixty dollars. The dealers id rough stones acquire the habit of distinguishing the water of a rough stone by simply breatb> ing .upon it. Among the historic diamonds the. Eajar weighed threo?bundred r and sixty-seven carats, and the' Great Mogul two hundred and eight ■'- Before it was cut the latter weighed nine hundred carats. From the composition of the diamond, we see what costly things nature manufao* tures from common material. ;^All the diamond fields of the world are not worth the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. A ruby,of five carats is double the value of a diamond of. that size, and one of ten carats is worth three times as much as one of corresponding size.^ A perfect rnby is the rarest of all stones. Eubies are often imitated.'with real stones,' the* most common being spinel. But it ,ii not difficult to distinguish the imitation,*'as the ruby is the only stone having pigeqn. blood color. Another precious .stone .is jthe sapphire, which is like the' ruby with the exception of the colour. Asmallstona has been seen, which was ruby on one side and sapphire on, the otherl."" j ''' • '■*