THE DIAMOND AND OTHER PRECIOUS STONES. 349 



preservation, aud wliicli is one of the most important qualities that a 

 precious stone can possess. Pliny says that in gems we see all the 

 majesty of nature united in a small space, and that in no other of her 

 works does she present anything more admirable. According to him, 

 the first one who wore a precious stone was the Titan Prometheus. 

 Eeleased from his bonds and impressed by some ideal sentiment, he in- 

 serted in a piece of his chain a fragment of the rock to which he had 

 been fastened, and thus formed a ring,which he ever after w^ore in memory 

 of his misfortunes. Is there not some allegorical sense in this story of 

 the construction of the first ring? What leads us to this supposition is 

 the mysterious personage himself who is made the wearer. This grand 

 personage Prometheus, the benefactor of man, who gave him fire stolen 

 from the gods, has always been venerated in antiquity for his opposition 

 to the imperious domination of Jupiter. 



The ancients included also, under the name of gems, stones engraven 

 either in relief or in intaglio, and in this form of art they have left us 

 the most admirable productions that the imagination can conceive. 

 Here, as in sculpture, the moderns have neither surpassed nor even 

 attained to the perfection of the works of antiquity. Engraven stones, 

 which were used as seals, are now the most precious and valuable of 

 relics, while they afford us definite mineralogical ideas as to the various 

 kinds of ornamental stones known from the earliest period of history. 



Stones of color do not probably, at the i)resent day, represent more 

 than one-tenth of the total value of gems, while diamonds may be esti- 

 mated as ninety per cent. This was different among the ancients. With 

 them the diamond was hardly known as an ornamental jewel, because 

 it was uncut, and did not exhibit those vivid colors which now place it 

 in the highest rank among precious stones. Furthermore, our system 

 of lighting with lamps, gas, or candles, throws uijon all objects tints 

 very unfavorable to the natural color of gems. Thus the garnet, tur- 

 quoise, amethyst, and even the opal, lose much of their luster in these 

 artificial lights. When a colored stone is placed in the path of the solar 

 spectrum, its color will vary with the portion of the spectrum which 

 falls upon it ; and two stones of the same color, but of a different na- 

 ture, will exhibit different effects. Thus a paste, placed beside a fine 

 colored stone, betrays its worthlessness. A simpler method of testing 

 stones is to look at them through a bit of glass colored red, yellow, blue, 

 or green. Every stone will exhibit under this test properties peculiar 

 to itself, and by which its nature may be recognized. 



Since we have spoken of paste, I would remark that in spite of the 

 high price of fine stones, there are fewer false ones used than at first 

 we should be inclined to 'believe. Paste, colored or not, is only a very 

 fine glass overcharged with lead and enamel, analogous to the best 

 quality of cut-glass for table service. In the early times of its substi- 

 tution for precious stones, it was cut very carefully ; now it has beconae 

 common and cheap and inferior in workmanship. Besides, national 



