MYSTIC CRYSTAL SPHERE 25 



masses have been impaired by the jolts or blows accompanying their trans- 

 portation, which produce funnel-shaped flaws that may extend further and 

 hopelessly ruin the integrity of the mineral's texture. 



In the ancient river channels of California, dislodged crystals in confused 

 association have been found as at Mokelumne Hill, Calaveras County; some 

 of sufficient size to yield crystal spheres of respectable dimensions and mixed 

 with river drift, sand, clay and with scattered smaller crystals, but whose 

 origin is unknown. Fabulous stories come down to us of the size of quartz 

 (Crystallus) masses, as that of Mohammed Ben Mansur who alludes to a 

 merchant of Mauritania, having a basin " made of two pieces of crystal so 

 large that four men could sit in it at once." (King.) 



Looking at this attractive invention of Art, the story of Vidius Pollio 

 comes to one's mind, how he ordered a boy who had broken a crystal to be 

 thrown into his lamprey pond, and how Augustus punished him by com- 

 manding all vases of the kind to be destroyed in his presence, an arbitrary 

 act that must have sent the coldest kinds of shivers up the backs of self- 

 indulgent connoisseurs. In the days of the Former Empire the wealthy 

 wore rings of quartz and ladies carried balls of crystal in their hands as a 

 solace and a protection during summer heats. King quotes from the Greek : 



Now courts the breeze with peacock feathers fanned, 

 And now with ball of crystal cools her hand. 



But the crystal ball has engendered the strange delusions of prophecy 

 and clairvoyance, a strange tale of credulity and superstition, not always 

 even by scientific writers regarded too scornfully. Crystal vision has a 

 very ancient history. It was wide-spread in the Orient, and the Assyrians, 

 Hebrews, Greeks and Romans practiced it. The topic is a strange and 

 stimulating one taken in its connection with existence among savage or 

 aboriginal cultures, and studied also on the side of its psychological signifi- 

 cance. Who has not heard of the famous and erudite Doctor Dee? 



Dr. Daniel G. Brinton in a paper on the folklore of Yucatan quoting a 

 Spanish observer Garcia, writes that the wise men among the natives prac- 

 ticed a sort of divination through the use of a rock crystal and that it had an 

 influence on the crops. Such crystals have been found buried in the ancient 

 mounds of Arkansas, North Carolina and elsewhere, and it has been sug- 

 gested that they appealed in some way to the Indians and may have pos- 

 sessed a talismanic virtue in their eyes. 



So prolific of suggestion and so knit in with civilized and historic associa- 

 tions is the simple text of this, our "Mystic Crystal Sphere," that its treat- 

 ment could be indefinitely expanded. And when we think of the far more 

 beautiful things which this same quartz, this "congealed breath of the 

 White Dragon" has yielded under the sculpturing hands of artists, and still 

 further recall its numerous other phases as onyx, amethyst and opal, this 

 universal mineral becomes one of the most interesting of inorganic products. 



