MEMOIR ON EMERY. 



Communicated to the Academy of Sciences of the French Institute, July, 1850. 



PART FIRST. 



ON THE GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY OF EMERY FROM OBSERVATIONS MADE 



IN ASIA MINOR. 



Of all the mineral substances employed in the arts few 

 have offered so little opportunity for geological examination as 

 emery, and consequently our knowledge of it in this particular 

 is very limited. 



Aware of the importance of the study of this substance in 

 situ, both in a scientific and practical point of view, I did not 

 lose the opportunity afforded by my late position under the 

 Turkish Government to develop certain facts that came under 

 my notice the latter part of the year 1846. Prior to that 

 period emery (which term is here used, as in the arts, to ex- 

 press that mixed granular corundum employed for abrasion), 

 although known to exist in many places in greater or less 

 abundance, was supplied to the arts almost entirely from the 

 island of Naxos in the Grecian Archipelago. So true is this 

 that the proprietors of the mines in that island controlled 

 completely the price of this mineral. The emery from Naxos 

 frequently went under the name of Smyrna emery, from the 

 fact of its coming to us from that port, where it is originally 

 carried from the island for future exportation. 



Prior to 1846 the existence of emery was not remarked in 

 Asia Minor or any of the contiguous islands except that of 

 Samos, which fact is alluded to in Tournefort's travels in the 

 seventeenth century. In the latter part of 1846 I arrived in 

 Smyrna, and was shown specimens, which I recognized as emery, 

 that came from a place about twenty miles north of Smyrna; 



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