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Gems That Are Not Stones 231
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conclave block, and then tear out the palpitating heart as an offering to the principal deity.
There
is a select list of stones so rare that they do not come within the
range of practical politics for the merchant, but to round, the story
somewhat I will tell you of them now. The three rarest of all are the
Plasma, the Sphene and the White Spinel.
The
plasma is a translucent green-coloured chalcedony which was held in
great esteem in the old days of the ancient world, but is now rarely or
never encountered. Like it, the Sphene is so exceedingly rare a gem
that one only comes across it in a museum collection. I myself have
only seen a specimen of sphene once in a dealer's hand and I never
dealt in it personally. In colour it may be of a clear green, yellow or
brown. Its composition is a silica of titanium (an extremely rare
element) and lime, so-called titanite. When cut and polished, the most
distinguishing feature of sphene is the display of sparkling colours
seen on the edge of the stone, which has the property of refracting
light rays to an extraordinary degree. The word sphene itself
sufficiently describes the natural shape of the crystal, for it comes
from the Greek Sphên, meaning a wedge, this being the crystal formation of the mineral.
The
white spinel is so rare that only one specimen of it ever existed, so
far as is known. At least, there is no reliable record of any other.
This is briefly the story of the unique stone. It came to notice in
1803, when Boldoc Swamie, King of Kandy, presented Mr. Robert Honner,
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