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Ch. 6: Opal

Ch. 6: Opal Page of 515 Ch. 6: Opal Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
332
A POPULAR TREATISE ON GEMS.
sion a turquoise two inches long, in" the form of a heart. This formerly belonged to Nadir Shah, who wore it as an amulet, for which he asked five thousand rubles.
A short time ago, I beheld, at a sale, one of the largest and most splendid turquoises, which was one inch in size, and of a blue color.
Major McDonald's collection of turquoises, from Arabia, exhibited at the London Exhibition, in 1851, was xery beautiful; it consisted of two hundred specimens, cut and polished. They differed very little from the Persian tur­quoises. He discovered several localities in the country of Sonalby, sixteen days' journey northeast of Suez, but all were within a range of forty miles, and upon a mountain range, at from five thousand to six thousand feet of eleva­tion. Some turquoises were found in situ, but most of them were collected from the ravines descending the mountain chain. The rock is a reddish sandstone, composed of quartz grains, belonging to the paleozoic rocks. Their hardness is equal to that of agate. The nodules of turquoise form groups, almost like currant seeds, in the sandstone. There may be observed in this collection, veins and small concre­tions from one tenth to one twentieth of an inch in thick­ness, which cut across the bed of sandstone like small threads; in color they vary from an intense blue to a bluish-white.
NATROLITE.
This mineral has been discovered of-late years, and re­ceives its name from the Latin natron, soda, given to it on account of that alkali being contained in it; it occurs reni-form, botryoidal, and massive, such as mammillary, and in the alternate zones around the centre; it lias a splintery fracture; is translucent on the edges; of a pearly lustre: its colors are white, yellowish-white, or reddish-brown, and
Ch. 6: Opal Page of 515 Ch. 6: Opal
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