316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
quarter of 1 per cent of the original material is then placed on 
sorting tables having a surface consisting of an iron plate and is 
sorted over by one of the company’s officers (a European). He 
takes out any large gems which may be present. The gravel then 
passes on to a series of tables around each of which a number of 
men (natives) are seated, about six to a table, who re-sort it very 
carefully, removing every stone which has any value. Each man 
wears on his head a large box with a front of iron gauze which 
prevents him from secreting any stones in his mouth or from 
swallowing them. A foreman (native), who is supposed to be 
strictly honest, watches the operations at each table. ‘These men 
are very expert at stealing stones and are carefully searched before 
they leave the building at the close of the day. The exhausted tail- 
ings are then taken from the mill and sold to a Burmese woman, 
who buys the whole output and who then divides it up into a series 
of little conical heaps and sells them at a rupee a piece to other 
women, who go over the pile grain by grain and collect from it 
every minute ruby which it may contain and sell these to be used in 
making watch bearings and for other purposes to which they may 
be of use. A group of women sorting over these little piles is seen 
in Plate 6. The gems which are obtained in the mill are sent to 
the headquarters of the company in the town of Mogok and are 
subjected to a final sorting and classification into the various grades 
which are then marketed. For this purpose small quantities at a 
time are taken by certain expert gem sorters, whose honesty is 
undoubted, and placed on shallow highly polished brass plates about 
a foot and a half in diameter and sorted over in the bright sunlight. 
These sorters are seen at work on the veranda of the company’s office 
at Mogok, in Plate 6. The man at the margin of the photograph 
on the right is cutting a ruby on a wheel turned by a second man. 
In addition to rubies, other gems are found in the byon, although 
less abundantly. On looking over the concentration product as it 
comes to the office from the mill there can be distinguished: 1. Rubies 
of various intensities of color. 2. Sapphires, blue, yellow, or white, 
showing similar variations in color. 8. Spinels usually pink in color, 
the intensity of the color differing in different individuals. These 
often show the characteristic octahedral form. These spinels are, 
next to the ruby, the most common gem in this district. 4. Common 
opaque corundum. 5. Tourmalines. 6. Zircons. 7. Quartz. 8. Other 
minerals, such as beryl, scapolite, apatite, and fibrolite (very rare). 
While Mogok has produced the finest rubies which have ever 
been found, the value of the output seems small when compared with 
outputs of districts where metallic ores are mined. From 1899 to 1905 
the mines yielded annually gems to the value of about $450,000. In 
