ARTIFICIAL PRECIOUS STONES. 539 



historic foundation, this education will at the same time embrace the 

 elements of modern civilization in due measure. By itself giving free 

 play, within certain limits, to realism, it will be all the better enabled 

 to resist its encroachments. By yielding a little of its own, it will in- 

 sure the safety of all the rest ; and thus perhaps it will defend if it is 

 not already too late the nation's treasure which has been intrusted 

 to it, German idealism. 







ARTIFICIAL PEECIOITS STONES. 1 



By CAEUS STERNE. 



ONE day, not long ago, the jewelers of Paris were in a high state of 

 excitement, and justly so, for the news had reached them from 

 the Academy of Sciences that two chemists, MM. E. Fremy and Feil, 

 had discovered a process for the manufacture by the pound of certain 

 kinds of precious stones ranking in value next to the diamond, and fre- 

 quently commanding still larger prices than the latter namely, the 

 ruby, the sapphire, and the most precious of all, the Oriental emerald. 

 At first the Parisian jewelers consoled themselves with the thought that 

 the genuine stones would always be preferred to the artificial ones, but 

 the excitement increased when it became known that MM. Fremy 

 and Feil did not propose to imitate precious stones, but that their pro- 

 ductions would be perfectly equal to the natural ones, and that a watch 

 would run on their artificial rubies as well as on natural ones, because 

 both of them were equally hard. Now the dealers in precious stones 

 asserted that it was sinful to imitate Nature's work in that manner, and 

 that the Government ought to prohibit it. On the other hand, a few 

 enthusiastic feuilletonistes proclaimed that the discovery in question 

 foreshadowed a still more important one that of making gold and dia- 

 monds ; that the dreams of the alchemists were about to be realized, 

 and that poverty and wretchedness would be no more. 



Of the prospect of poverty and wretchedness coming to an end we say 

 nothing here. As for the transformation of lead and other base metals 

 into gold and silver, we have to declare that this branch of alchemy is 

 something altogether different from the manufacture of precious stones. 

 Most of our modern chemists hold metals to be simple, immutable ele- 

 ments, which have always been what they are now, and which may 

 change their form, but never their peculiar nature. Not so with pre- 

 cious stones, most of which, and especially those that are most highly 

 prized, are of very lowly origin indeed. In the eyes of the chemist the 

 ruby, the sapphire, the topaz, etc., are simply modifications of one sub- 

 stance (alumina), which, as clay, forms the greater portion of the earth's 



1 Translated from the Gartenlaube. 



