Report on the Exhibition of Genns, 69 



CORUNDUM — THE SAPPHIRES. 



Of this important class of gem stones it seems to me that 

 no one country in the world can boast of so large a variety. 

 Whatever may be said of the perfection in size and colour of 

 particular stones, it nevertheless does appear that in no known 

 country has there been brought together so great a variety 

 of sapphires ; and if this can be said of the results of acci- 

 dental discovery, surely something more might reasonably be 

 expected had a systematic search been instituted. In reality 

 we owe nearly all our knowledge to the circumstance of these 

 crystals having persistently asserted their greater specific 

 gravity, and having therefore clung to the gold till it came 

 to the last operation of cleansing in the tin dish ! What had 

 been thrown away with the larger pebbles no man can tell ; 

 but it is the same in all nature, where you find small stones 

 there are larger ones not far off. 



Not altogether out of place, in a report like this, will be 

 an anecdote related to me at least nine years ago, and before 

 a single sapphire had been reported by the diggers, by my 

 friend Mr. Crisp, of Queen- street. In the course of a conver- 

 sation with him on such matters as I am now dealing with, 

 I had asked him for any information he possessed, when he 

 told me of several matters brought to him, and then added, 

 " I have found but one sapphire, and that I got out of the 

 craw of a vjild duck : curiosity led me to examine the 

 miscellaneous collection of stones in its gizzard, when I found 

 a true dark blue sapphii^e." I never doubted the truth of 

 this ; but the exhibition brought out such an abundance of 

 sapphires from Dandenong Creek as to render it rather a 

 wonder that more have not been found under like circum- 

 stances, than that he should have discovered the one I now 

 mention. 



Of sapphires, then, the exhibition brought together satis- 

 factory specimens of the following kinds and colours : — 

 Indigo blue, pale azure, deeper azure, the true azure, the 

 green or Oriental emerald, of which several specimens were 

 very large and fine, and a few well cut by Mr. Spinck, of 

 Melbourne, out of specimens supplied by myself and Mr. M. 

 Stephen, now of Beechworth. There were also many speci- 

 mens of the hair brown variety, the adamantine spar, quite 

 a number of the asterise, the star sapphire, but all, save one, 

 of a dark yellowish brown colour, but most perfect in their 

 six-rayed star and their cr37"stallographic characters. In my 



