148 
THE NATURALISTS’ COMPANION. 
markable phosgene inse 6 l, which the 
people daily utilize. Travelers there, 
on a difficult road, illuminate their path 
by attaching one of these beetles toeach 
of their feet, or by tying several to a 
stick and carrying it as a lantern. The 
creoles set them in the curls of their hair, 
and there, like resplendent jewels, they 
give a fairy-like aspect to the head of 
the wearer. The negresses, in their 
nocturnal dances, fasten these brilliant 
insedts over their robes of lace, woven 
from soft bark, and in their rapid and 
graceful movements they seem enveloped 
in a robe of fire. 
Science has not yet succeeded in ex¬ 
plaining the cause of this luminosity. 
Certain centipedes possess this peculiar¬ 
ity but with the singular modification 
that it must first be exposed to sunlight. 
Carus, the German anatomist, has dis¬ 
covered that even the eggs of some of the 
foregoing insects are luminous; which 
certainly is a very curious fact and one 
which may throw some light on the 
cause of their phantom brightness. 
Gems of the United States. 
BY G. D. STORY, CARTERVILLE, MO. 
It is a remarkable circumstance that 
although this country is so rich in its 
mineral resources, and that the world 
draws from us a great part of its supply 
of the precious metals, we have so far 
discovered here only an insignificent 
quantity of precious stones. The total 
value of the gems proper, mined in the 
United States in 1884 , was less than 
^ 30 , 000 , and yet we imported during 
the same year more than . 5 * 9 , 000,000 
worth of diamonds and other precious 
stones. 
Diamonds it seems have been found 
in various parts of the country but chief¬ 
ly in California and North Carolina, 
though the largest diamond yet discov¬ 
ered here was dug up by a laborer, thirty 
or more years ago, in Manchester, Va. 
This stone, not at first recognized, orig¬ 
inally weighed 23 ^ carats, and when re¬ 
duced by cutting, II 11-16 carats, and 
it was deemed so valuable that at one 
time v^ 6 ,ooo was loaned on it, though 
because of its imperfections and undesir¬ 
able color it is not woith more than a 
twentieth part of that sum. The Cali¬ 
fornia diamonds, found in fifteen or 
twenty different places, the most prolific 
being Cherokee Flats, Butte county, arc 
of all the colors known in the stone— 
white, yellow, straw and rose—but they 
are generally very small ranging in val¬ 
ue from v^io to v^ 5 o each. The largest, 
discovered at French Corral, weighs 
seven and a quarter carats, and many 
are unearthed whose value in the rough 
is not less than .5'ioo- Diamonds are 
always found in North Carolina in asso¬ 
ciation with th flexible sandstone, called 
itacolumite, which is peculiar to that 
state, where, too, sapphiies of notable 
brilliancy have appeared. A sapphire 
found at Jenks’ mine, in Franklin couny, 
is one of the finest known specimens of 
the emerald-green variety and because of 
its great rarity is piobably worth 5 'i jooo- 
Fine specimens of chryso-beryl, a stone 
which sometimes is almost equal in ap¬ 
pearance to the yellow diamond, and is 
principally obtained in Brazil and Cey¬ 
lon, have been found in different parts 
of New England, New York and the 
Southern states, and thespineal, a beau¬ 
tiful gem which is often sold fcr orien¬ 
tal ruby, is distributed in the same way. 
The best crystals of topaz come from 
the Platte Mountains in Colorado,one of 
these, weighing 125 carats, being an ex- 
