3°4 PRECIOUS STONES.
■Ceylon, a locality which undoubtedly furnished the ancients
with this gem, since numerous antique intagli are found on this
variety of the garnet. The dark orange hyacinth garnet is also
sometimes taken for the true hyacinth, or red zircon.
The name jacinth, or hyacinth, is given to varieties of several
species, as the garnet, the sapphire, the zircon, the topaz, and
the Vesuvianite, and, like some other names, is only an epithet
conferred on account of the color. Some lapidaries identify
the hyacinth with essonite, and others regard it as distinct
from the garnet, but its crystalline form and typical composition are identical with those of this species, the difference
consisting in color and specific gravity with thirty per cent
of lime in place of protoxide of iron. Engraved gems of what
was thought to be true hyacinth are in reality either hyacinth
garnet or sard.
Guarnaccino, the brownish red variety of the Italians, unites
the qualities of the garnet and the spinel, and when of superior excellence, it can hardly be distinguished from spinel-ruby,
while a rose-colored garnet resembles the balas-ruby. An
orange-red variety receives the name vermeille; the stargarnet, which displays a star, or rather a cross, when held in the
sunlight, owes this distinction rather to its construction than
to its color. A beautiful gem of different greens shading to
liver-brown, thought to be garnet, has recently been discovered
at Bobrowska, Siberia, in nodular masses, from the size of a pea
to that of a chestnut. It is a soft mineral, not exceeding five
in the scale, but has a remarkable play of colors ; its exact
chemical composition is not placed beyond doubt. Beautiful
white garnets, yielding gem-stones, are developed in Canada,
and a coarse, granular variety, called colophonite, is found in
.Scandinavia and America.
The name carbuncle, as applied to a precious stone, is very
