Loose Gemstones | Gem Art | Gem Stone Information



	BOOK X	205

	more feet long and deep and six, nine, or twelve inches wide and consisting entirely of this mineral. Miners have removed masses of pure ar-gentite weighing one hundred to two hundred pounds from these veins. They found so much in the outcrop of the Abertham mine that our miners have given it the name Divine Gift. This name is very similar to the Greek thelodoros which is also derived from two words.⁴ Sometimes masses of native silver of this same size are found in these veins but they are rare. Masses of similar size have been observed in the Joachimsthal valley where they are mined from pockets in the center of the second vein named the Stella. Often the mineral projects from rocks or stones with the form of an eye. More often it has the form of a bunch of grapes. Sometimes Nature has produced it in rounded or globular forms enclosed in stone. It often resembles twigs or branches. Indeed we see the small statue of a man with an infant in his arms that Nature and not Man has fashioned from argentite. This was found in the famous and richest mine of Schnee-berg, the George. Finally, the very thinnest of sheets are often found adhering to the surface of stones. The red silver mineral (argentum rude rubrum), if it is soft, is only slightly inferior, if inferior at all, to argentite, but if hard, contains more silver and possesses an extraordinary beauty that far surpasses it. It is most beautiful when it has a certain bluish tint or when it is transparent like carbunculus. There can be no doubt but that this mineral formed from some transparent stony material mixed with the juice of the silver to be. While it has the same color and tarnsparency as carbunculus nevertheless the two are quite different. The carbunculus is more brilliant, cannot be scratched with a file, and is affected very slowly, if at all, by fire while the ruby silver is less brilliant, soft enough to be scratched with a file and melts in a fire. The form of ruby silver varies as does the form of argentite. Usually it is angular sometimes resembling a cube, sometimes hexagonal like quartz, and sometimes with even more angles like pangonius. Very thin sheets are often found coating rocks or stones. The transparent mineral resembles the carbunculus while the non-transparent mineral,⁶ like ocher, varies greatly in color. Mineral resembling a medium red ocher is common in a mine at Schneeberg that takes its name from Levite. Old men say very definitely that the George mine yielded a much greater quantity of this mineral than any other silver mineral. Ruby silver sometimes contains gold as, for example, that mined in the Carpathian Mountains at Bocchantius and Chemnitz. There is a dark ruby silver mineral (argentum rude rubrum obscurum) obtained from the Santa Barbara mine in the Joachimsthal valley which spreads under the ⁴ From 0£0s, God, and δώί, gift. ⁵ Argentum rude rubrum, pyrargyrite; argentum rude rubrum translucidum, proustite. The former is a silver antimony sulphide, the latter a silver arsenic sulphide. In English the two minerals are collectively known as ruby silver.