316 A POPULAR TREATISE ON GEMS.
Connecticut
and on the North River we see beds of the foliated felspar extending
for miles. Sweden, Norway, and Greenland are likewise great
depositories of the common felspar.
The
amazon-stone is used in jewelry for rings, pins, seals, snuff-boxes,
&c. It is principally cut at Ekaterinen-burg, Siberia, where it is
ground on a leaden wheel with emery, and polished with rotten-stone on
a wooden wheel; its form is that of caboclion, and sometimes that of
the mixed pavilion-cut, when the table is to be cut pretty large, and
arched, in order to display more distinctly its peculiar colors.
Common
felspar is of no great value, and .only the amazon-stone is used in
jewelry, which commands a good price. Cut specimens, suitable for
ear-rings or brooches, are worth from three to five dollars.
A
very fine specimen of the amazon-stone, in its rough state, may be seen
in the New York Lyceum of Natural History. The imperial cabinet of St
Petersburg possesses two vases of this stone, which are nine inches
high and five and one half inches in diameter. Although our vitreous
felspar has not yet been brought into use for the purposes of jewelry
and other ornaments, yet it bids fair to contribute, at one day, much
to the national wealth of this country, for it is the best material for
porcelain, china, and earthen-ware. Already have many cargoes of this
beautiful mineral been shipped to France and England (six hundred tons
of the Connecticut, Middletown, felspar were, according to Professor
Shephard, last year shipped to Liverpool, and one hundred tons to the
Jersey porcelain manufactory), where the manufacturer appears to
appreciate better the purity of ingredients for the purposes just
mentioned. Instead of receiving, as hitherto, the manufactured goods
from abroad, made of our own raw material, it is earnestly
