358 SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF PRECIOUS STONES 



Semtsch, Solan, and Schelkowitz; at all these places garnets are now systematically 

 collected. In the year 1890 there were in this disti'ict 142 owners of garnet-fields, and 

 stones to the value of 80,000 gulden (ii*8000) were obtained by the labour of 362 persons 

 The trade in garnets was kept in the hands of about seventeen merchants. 



The stones are found in a clayey or sandy gravel belonging to the glacial drift and 

 resting on beds of Cretaceous age. In this gravel grains of garnet completely freed from 

 their mother-rock occur in large numbers. Some, however, are found embedded in a brown 

 semi-opal occurring in masses, the largest of which is about the size of a man's head. 

 These masses of opal are to be regarded as the remains of the serpentine in which the 

 pyrope was originally embedded, most of which, as serpentine, is now completely destroyed. 

 The garnets embedded in the masses of opal are not utilised, only those lying free in the 

 gravelly material being collected and cut. 



The deposit of gravel in which the pyrope occurs differs somewhat in different places. 

 At Chrastian, beneath a layer of soil, one metre in thickness, is a layer, two metres thick, 

 of garnetiferous gravel with a light grey loamy base ; below this is another layer of 

 garnetiferous gravel 4 metres thick bound together A\'ith a yellowish-brown clayey material. 

 The whole rests upon a bed of fuller's earth belonging to the Senonian division of the Upper 

 Cretaceous formation. At Meronitz the garnet -bearing layer is a peculiar clayey calcareous 

 conglomerate. 



Garnets are sometimes washed out of the loose gravel by rain-storms, and, owing to 

 this, good specimens are occasionally found lying loose on the surface of the ground. For 

 the most part, however, the stones are obtained in excavations. The surface-soil is removed 

 and the garnet-bearing layer penetrated by pits of greater or less depth, which are refilled 

 when the valuable material has been excavated. Only at specially rich spots are large 

 excavations undertaken, where also underground mining operations are carried on to a 

 small extent. The garnet-bearing earth is washed in suitable vessels to remove the lighter 

 clayey particles, after which the stones are picked out by hand and sorted according to 

 size by means of sieves. The stones are classified according to the number required to 

 make up a loth ( = 16| grams, or rather less than |- oz. avoirdupois), and are referred to as 

 " sixteens," " thirty-twos," " hundreds," and so on, according as 16, 32, or 100 stones make up 

 a loth. Most of the stones are very small, 500 or more in the aggregate weighing a loth. 

 Those of which 400 make up the weight of a loth are very numerous and of little value. 

 Stones the size of rice grains are worth more, as also are those the size of a pea, which, 

 however, are not found every day, while several years may elapse between the finding of 

 pyiopes of the size of a hazel-nut. It is estimated that in every 100 kilograms (220 lbs.) 

 of garnets there are only two to three "thirties," and in 2000 kilograms only one 

 " sixteen." 



It will be seen from this that a moderate number of stones of fair size are met with, 

 but that really large stones are rare. In the Gemmarum et Lapidiim Historia of Boetius de 

 Boot, published in 1609, is mentioned a pyrope, the size of a pigeon's egg, in the possession 

 of Kaiser Rudolph II., which was valued at 45,000 thalers (^£"6750). A very fine stone, the 

 size of a hen's egg, is now preserved in the Imperial Treasury at Vienna. In the " Green 

 Vaults " at Dresden is one measuring 35 millimetres in length, 18 millimetres in breadth, 

 and 27 millimetres in thickness, that is, about the size of a pigeon's egg ; it weighs 

 468i carats, and is set in an Order of the Golden Fleece. 



Since all Bohemian pyropes are of the same quality and purity, their value varies only 

 with their weight. Small stones are very cheap, but the price of larger ones is by no means 

 inconsiderable ; no rough stone found in recent years has realised more than 500 florins 



