VALUE AND PRICE 101 



this more perfect manner. Poorer imitations, which can be recognised at a glance even by 

 the most unsophisticated, are made from common materials with no special care ; the cost 

 of their production is low and they are used in the most inferior so-called ornaments. 



.The material for the imitation of precious stones having been produced by the methods 

 described above, is ground, polished, and mounted, these processes differing in no wise from 

 the grinding, polishing, and mounting of genuine stones, which has already been described. 



Attempts appear to have been recently made to produce a glass imitation of a precious 

 stone which, besides the usual constituents of this substance, shall contain those characteristic 

 of the stone imitated. Thus a rough chemical analysis of this material would be similar to 

 that of the genuine stone. Imitations of emerald have recently come into the market, which 

 contain seven to eight per cent, of beryllium oxide, an essential constituent of emerald but 

 not ordinarily of glass. All the physical characters of the material are those of green glass 

 and not of emerald. Of the place and method of preparation of this material nothing 

 is known. 



K. VALUE AND PRICE. 



The esteem in which the different kinds of precious stone are held does not by any 

 means depend solely on their beauty, durability, or similar characters, but is influenced by 

 various external conditions. The price demanded for precious stones is therefore fluctuating, 

 since it is regulated, as in the case of any other objects which are bought and sold, by the 

 laws of supply and demand. A large supply and a small demand results in a low price, and 

 vice versa ; when the supply and demand both vary in the same direction, that is, when they 

 both rise or both fall equally, the price remains stationary. 



The supply of each kind of precious stone depends essentially on the frequency with 

 which it occurs in nature and on the extent to which it is mined. For reasons which have 

 already been pointed out, precious stones which are of very common occurrence even when 

 possessed of considerable beauty are never held in very high esteem, and consequently never 

 command a high price, the price of the cut stone often only slightly exceeding the cost of 

 cutting. Stones on the contrary which possess the merit of rarity are much sought after 

 and valued far more highly. 



The supply of any one kind of precious stone in the market varies at different times 

 and this causes a corresponding variation in price. The exhaustion of a locality, which has 

 formerly supplied a large number of stones, will result in a rise in the value of that 

 particular stone, while the discovery of a new source of supply has an opposite effect. The 

 history of the various discoveries of diamond is an instructive example of this fact. In the 

 seventeenth century, the price of the diamond rose steadily higher and higher on account of 

 the gradual exhaustion of the Indian mines which were the only ones then known. The 

 discovery of the rich Brazilian mines in 1728 caused a rapid and marked fall in the price of 

 diamond ; with the gradual exhaustion of the Brazilian deposits, the price again gradually 

 rose until the discoveiy of diamonds in South Africa in 1867. So large has been the supply 

 of diamonds from this locality that the price, for average material at least, is lower than it 

 has ever been before. 



The amount of production is not, however, the only factor which influences the supply. 

 A large accumulation of stock thrown suddenly upon the market has the effect of lowering 

 the prices. Of interest in this connection is the statement made by Kluge in 1860 to the 

 effect that a few years before, at the Easter fair of Leipzig, the price of diamonds suddenly 

 fell fifty per cent, owing to the fact that the Brazilian Government had paid the interest of 

 the national debt in diamonds instead of in cash. 



