NA TURE 



157 



THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1916. 



GEMS AND SUPERSTITION. 

 The Magic of Jewels and Charms. By Dr. G. F. 

 Kunz. Pp. XV + 422. (Philadelphia and Lon- 

 don: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1915.) Price 215. 

 net. 



DR. KUNZ, who is well known as a mineralo- 

 gist of repute and as one of the leading 

 authorities of the day on precious stones and 

 jewelry, has evidently spared no time and trouble 

 to make himself acquainted with the many strange 

 fancies and superstitions that have at various 

 times and in various countries been attached to 

 gems and other treasured objects. As the result 

 of his industry he had compiled a large mass of 

 notes, out of which he gave us barely two years 

 ago a book entitled " The Curious Lore of Precious 

 Stones," and now, since his stock of material was 

 iby no means exhausted by the publication of that 

 iwork, he sets before us a companion volume, or, 

 las he terms it in his preface, the twin sister, the 

 bcope of which is much more diffuse ; precious 

 ■atones enter again, especially as regards their 

 i:urative and talismanic uses, but besides them we 

 jind also substances which do not ordinarily figure 

 in jewelry, such as meteorites, fossils, bezoars, 

 ind animal concretions. Founded as it is upon 

 iiotes, and copiously sprinkled with lengthy ex- 

 jracts from the original literature, the book pro- 

 ,eeds with something of the jerky gait of the 

 Irrasshopper, and we find nothing in the way of a 

 jreneral discussion or the development of some 

 pmprehensive theory. Nevertheless, the author 

 as done good service by providing a good and 

 jonvenient resume of the subject, and not the least 

 'aluable and interesting paragraphs are those in 

 ihich he gives the results of his own observa- 

 jons. 

 In the first chapter, on magic stones and electric 

 ems, the author touches upon some curious 

 :ones. He considers that galactite, which accord- 

 ig to Pliny came from the Nile and had the colour 

 id odour of milk, was not, strictly speaking, a 

 ! one at all, but nitrate of lime. Rain-makers, 

 ho professed to produce rain by their magic art, 

 tm to have made use of any unusual stone that 

 iippened to come to hand, and, although rock- 

 •^ystal has been so employed, transparent stones 

 •e by no means the rule. In medieval times 

 ntless attempts were made by the alchemists to 

 over the so-called philosopher's stone, which 

 aid transmute base metal into gold, and the 

 tnorant people of those days were often success- 

 jlly imposed upon. A description is given of the 

 pst striking examples of the supposed trans- 

 btation that have come down to us, viz., the 

 Ilge medallion, bearing in relief the heads of the 

 Inperor Leopold and his ancestors of the house of 

 jipsburg, which was treated by Seller in 1677, 

 d the exceedinglv rare medal struck in 1647 by 

 JTimand of the Emperor Ferdinand III. from 

 •M supposed to have been produced in his pres- 

 e by Hofmann; in neither case, of course, is 

 i NO. 2425, VOL. 97] 



the metal pure gold, but it remains a mystery what 

 was the actual process, the historical interest of 

 the objects precluding a chemical examination. 

 The remarkable electric properties of tourmaline, 

 in which respect it transcends other minerals, first 

 attracted notice as early as 171 7, and were defi- 

 nitely established by 1756. Dr. Kunz describes in 

 appreciative terms the beautiful examples of this 

 mineral that have come from Brazil and California, 

 and bases upon them somewhat extravagant sym- 

 bolism ; thus as regards the " peace stones " — the 

 well-known tourmaline crystals, red and green at 

 opposite ends with a colourless band in the middle 

 —he writes : " We can see symbolised in them the 

 great and consoling fact that, however marked 

 may be the differences between any two peoples, 

 they need not be cause for enmity, but may instead 

 become true and enduring sources of peace and 

 bonds of union." The electric properties of amber 

 were, of course, a much earlier discover}-, dating 

 back to 600 B.C. That the wearing of a necklace of 

 this substance kept off attacks of erysipelas in a 

 person subject to them was maintained by the late 

 Rev. C. W. King, the well-known writer on pre- 

 cious stones ; the author quotes his actual words : 

 " Its efficacy in defence of the throat against chills 

 is evidently due to its extreme warmth when in 

 contact with the skin and the circle of electricity 

 so maintained." 



In the chapter on meteorites the author draws 

 for his description of the earlier falls largely upon 

 Chladni, who was the first writer to make a sys- 

 tematic study of the numerous traditions of such 

 phenomena, and to suggest a doubt in the minds 

 of the scientific world whether they should be dis- 

 missed as idle fables. The more famous of the 

 historical stones include the Phrygian stone, which 

 was conveyed to Rome in 204 B.C., the Diana of 

 the Ephesians "which fell from Jupiter," the 

 Kaaba stone at Mecca, and the stone which fell 

 at Ensisheim in Alsace on November 16, 1492. 

 We note that Dr. Kunz speaks of the collection 

 of meteorites at \lenna as the finest in the world, 

 which is possibly true, but we may remark that the 

 one in the Natural History Museum, London, is 

 practically equal to it, and contains the large Cran- 

 bourne stone, weighing about 3^ tons. Descrip- 

 tions and illustrations are given of the three enor- 

 mous masses discovered by Admiral, then Lieut., 

 Peary in 1894 near Melville Bay, W>st Greenland, 

 and a few years subsequently removed by him to 

 the American Museum of Natural History, 

 New York, weighing resjx;ctively 36^^ tons, 3 tons, 

 and 1 100 lb.; they have been named the Ahni- 

 ghito, the Woman, and the Dog. 



It may strike many readers as strange to read 

 that even as late as the middle of the eighteenth 

 century powdered hard stones were still in use for 

 medicinal purposes ; thus in a druggist's price-list 

 dated 1757 a pound of emerald is quoted at eight 

 groschen {5Z.), of sapphire at double, and of ruby 

 at treble that amount. The author gives lengthy 

 details of the supposed virtues of the various gem- 

 stones, the species being arranged in alphabetical 

 order, and devotes a couple of chapters to the 



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