think
of a red stone. It may therefore come as a surprise to them to learn
that there are garnets of several other colours too and that these bear
other names. A violet variety for instance is known as rhodolite, and
an intensely crimson stone of the same family has been christened
almandine. It is from this latter variety that the carbuncle (a domed
stone) is fashioned.
Another
variety of garnet, orange-coloured, is often encountered in the gravel
pits of Ceylon, and revels in the spicey name of "cinnamon stone". But
the most attractive of all garnets, and perhaps the rarest, is the
stone I barely mentioned above, the olivine. The colour of this stone
shades from dark olive green to that with which we are familiar in the
best light-coloured emeralds. Its discovery dates from comparatively
recent times. In fact, when the first supplies of the extraordinarily
lustrous stone reached the Paris and London markets in the 'eighties of
last century from Ekaterinburg in Siberia, the trade at first mistook
them for emeralds and, no doubt, those who had first come across them
in the Ural diggings had cherished high hopes of being the discoverers
of a new emerald mine.
Although
the discoverers were soon disillusioned, nevertheless the world of
fashion received these green garnets as an attractive novelty and
consequently dealers paid rather high prices for such limited supplies
as reached the market
Small-sized
as olivines were for the most part, they were chiefly used as surrounds
of larger centre stones (diamonds). With their usual perspicacity the
American dealers were particularly quick off the mark in making
