A TREASURE HOUSE OF GEMS 



AN APPRECIATION OF THE BEAUTY OF THE MORGAN COLLEC- 

 TION IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 



By L. P. Gratacap 



UNITED with each other in clustering groups, as in jewelry and 

 decorations, gems gain in splendor, yet the claims of education 

 in the halls of a museum of natural history demand that gems for 

 specific study be individualized and separate. The only way to produce 

 the impression of richness and brilliancy is to have them profusely shown, 

 to be lavish and generous in examples, with a kind of luxurious extravagance 

 even that startles. 



In the Morgan gem collection something of this effect is indeed produced. 

 As we pass in review the cases in the gem room, each with few exceptions 

 devoted to a single gem, the aggregate effect is sensibly imposing — a feeling 

 reflected in the average visitor by his bewildering estimates of its value. 

 Admiration arises in part from the comprehensiveness of the collection, 

 the wide embrace within it of the minerals that may serve the purposes of 

 decoration, or enter, less conclusively as gems, into works of art, the rococo 

 of the artificer in quartz, jade, jadeite, rhodonite, fluorite, gypsum, serpen- 

 tine, agate and chalcedony. 



Herein has been displayed the exhaustiveness of Dr. Kunz's inquiry, 

 sympathy and learning, for the present Morgan collection of gems is practi- 

 cally the consolidation of the two World's Fair Exhibits of Tiffany and Com- 

 pany at Paris in 1889 and 1900, and Dr. Kunz gathered for those occasions 

 something suitable from every available source. 



The primacy of gems remains, to-day as always, with the diamond, the 

 sapphire, ruby and emerald, curiously invaded by that frail product of the sea 

 and the river, the pearl of which Julius Wodiska says, " In its purity, liquid 

 beauty, and charm of romantic and poetical association the pearl — aristocrat 

 of gems — leads even its peers of the highest rank, the diamond, emerald, 

 ruby and sapphire." Perhaps we might quarrel with this impersonation 

 of the pearl, but there can be no hesitation in ascribing to it a wonderful 

 charm as we see the varied and fascinating display in the Morgan collection. 



From this case of pearls the visitor may learn also the scheme devised 

 by Dr. Kunz for the whole collection of gem-material, that it might sub- 

 serve quite completely the purposes of scientific discrimination and compari- 

 son. In this case of pearls are the calcareous secretions of the hard-shell 

 clam (Mercenaria mercenaria) , our edible quahog; the less attractive offer- 

 ings from the pearl factory of the common oyster; the rosy rolls from the 

 giant whelk of the south (Strombus gigas); the dissymetric nodules, with 

 their vivid sheens, from the abalone (Haliotis splendens) of California, 

 and the priceless dainty and delicate spheres, pale silvery and lilac-tinted, 

 from the mantles of the freshwater clam (Unio). Here are perfect and 

 baroque pearls, hinge pearls and pearlaceous masses, the exhibit unduly 



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