ARTIFICIAL PRECIOUS STONES — HEATON. 233 



to quote a recently published circular, "are as worthless as the 

 jewelry from a Christmas cracker." I have, I hope, clearly shown 

 you the immense difference that exists between the imitation and 

 the artificial ruby, taking an example; the former, it is true, depre- 

 ciates rapidly in use and deserves such a description, but the latter 

 has absolutely all the essential qualities of the natural stone, and to 

 place the two on the same plane as worthless trash is unfair to modern 

 science and ingenuity. It must be clearly understood that there is 

 no essential difference discernible between natural and artificial ruby 

 as regards their beauty and their durability, which, as we have seen, 

 are the two great items in the intrinsic value of a stone. But, of 

 course, the price of a stone is chiefly determined by that third factor, 

 which I have not so far taken into account — namely, rarity. Per- 

 sonally I must confess that I have never been able to see why one 

 should value a thing for no other reason than that it is difficult to 

 get, although I suppose here I am in a hopeless minority and that it 

 is and always will be human nature to take this view. 



It would serve no useful purpose to enter into that fruitful subject 

 of controversy, the price of an article due to extrinsic causes, but I 

 may say this — that whilst to me personally one is as good as the 

 other, if any man is prepared to pay £100 for a natural stone when 

 he can obtain essentially the same thing, artificially produced, for 

 £5, he is absolutely entitled to get it; and I would not wish you to 

 think that I would defend for a moment the man who attempted to 

 supply artificial as natural. But if this is so, it is still more the case 

 that nobody has any right to supply anyone with paste under the 

 name of artificial (or synthetic, or scientific, if these names are pre- 

 ferred) gem. I do think that the distinction between the two should 

 be clearly recognized and that it should not be permitted to use the 

 term artificial incUscriminately. At present this is being widely 

 practiced; every day one sees offered for sale "rubies, emeralds, 

 sapphires, and pearls artificially produced and having all the proper- 

 ties of the natural stone." Now, as I have indicated, such a thing 

 as an artificial emerald answering this description is unknown and, 

 as a matter of fact, the stones supplied under this title are, as a rule, 

 nothing more nor less than paste imitations, the public being delib- 

 erately led to believe otherwise. There is in this case, as I have 

 indicated, a real practical difference between the two articles, not 

 merely a question of opinion. 



Again, one must deprecate the custom that has sprung up of 

 arguing that, because "a rose by any other name will smell as sweet," 

 a "scientific" stone will be as good by any other name than its right 

 one. When synthetic yellow sapphire is called "scientific topaz" 

 perhaps no serious fraud is perpetrated, although it is misleading, 

 but when artificial white sapphire is openly and deliberately sold at 



