white
stripes, fissures or knots, &c. The sapphire, particularly the red
and blue varieties, being great favorites in commerce, are often
imitated, not only by means of other colored gems .resembling them, but
also by substituting pastes. .Instead of ruby, we sometimes get the
spinelle, garnet, hyacinth, red quartz, calcined amethyst, red-burnt
Brazilian topaz, red tourmaline; and instead of the blue sapphire, we
get the disthene, kyanite, and the cordier-ite,—hardness is the best
test.
NOTICE OF SOME LARGE SAPPHIRES.
Tavernier
describes two large rubies said to have belonged to the King of
Visapur, one of which weighed fifty and three quarters carats, and the
other seventeen and a half carats. The first was valued at sixty
thousand francs, the other at seventy-four thousand five hundred and
thirty francs.
The
prettiest sapphire at present in the Imperial Museum of Fiance, in
Paris, is without fault or defect; it weighs 132 1/16 carats, and is
estimated at 100,000 francs. This sapphire was found in Bengal by a
poor man who dealt in wooden spoons. It belonged afterwards to the
mercantile house of Rospoli, in Rome, who sold it to a German prince;
he again sold it to the jeweller Ferret, of Paris, for 170,000 francs.
Two
great sapphires belonging to Miss Burdett Coutts, of London, and valued
at 750,000 francs, were much admired at the Paris exhibition in 1855.
The crown-jewels of France contain about 150 sapphires, of an aggregate weight of 350 carats, and are valued at 600,000 francs.
Several sapphires with engravings are seen in Rome, such as Hercules; in Turin, in the collection of Genevasio,
