It
is intended in this report to illustrate some of the principal North
Carolina gems, more remarkable usually as crystals than as precious
stones for jewelry, that grace the great collections before alluded to.
All those shown on the colored plates, and many of the others, are
contained especially in the Morgan-Tiffany collections, presented by
the munificence of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan to the American Museum of
Natural History, at New York; these comprise the splendid collections
formed by the author for Tiffany & Company, of New York, of
American gems and precious stones shown at the Paris Exposition of
1889, and the still finer and more extensive one displayed by them at
the Paris Exposition of 1900; also the Tiffany collection shown at the
Cotton States Exposition at Atlanta, in 1894, and presented to the U.
S. National Museum by Prof. L. T. Chamberlin.
Many
of the figures are loaned by the courtesy of the publishers of " Gems
and Precious Stones of North America," and will form part of the new
edition of that work, treating of the Morgan-Tiffany and Morgan-Bement
collections of minerals in the American Museum of Natural History; this
latter made up of the Spang collection and many from the Hidden,
Wilcox, and other collections. It was thought well to illustrate for
this report specimens in places which are readily accessible, and no
collection on this continent contains so many choice examples of North
Carolina gems as does this one.
Puller
discussions upon all these subjects, with geological, mineral-ogical,
chemical, or crystallographic details, may be found in the reports
issued by the North Carolina Geological Survey, which contains many
most valuable papers and monographs by such authorities as Kerr,
Shep-ard, Genth, Chatard, Hidden, Lewis, and Pratt, and in the Journal
of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, published at Chapel Hill;
also in the Annual Eeports of the Department of Mining Statistics of
the United States Geological Survey, prepared by the author under the
directorship first of Albert Williams, Jr., and then of Dr. David T.
Day, who has done everything to encourage and increase public interest
in the development of the precious stone and mineral resources of the
United States. Many papers have likewise appeared on the same topics in
the American Journal of Science. Among all these, much of the
literature of the gem product of the State may be found. It is the
purpose of the present report to present in a clear and concise manner
such facts as may interest the mineralogist, the collector, or even the
tourist who wishes to acquaint himself with these " crystallized
flowers," as the celebrated Abbe Hauy called them, whose enduring
beauty remains unchanged by the variations of climate found upon our
globe.
