the border from 3/100 to 5/100 inches in thickness around the edge and near the termination of the crystals.1
If this edge were thicker, fine gems could be cut from it. The finding
of fine beryls and emeralds of pale color, collected by Mr. Stephenson,
one mile southwest of the Stony Point deposit and a short distance from
the place where the same mineral was found by Mr. Smeaton, of New York,
shows that the deposit is evidently not accidental, and that there is
encouragement for future working in this new locality.
Some
beautiful beryls were found at Haddam, Conn., over fifty years ago, the
largest of which was 2 inches in length and 1 inch in diameter. They
were remarkable from the fact that part of the crystal was of a
transparent green color and free from flaws, while below a certain line
of demarcation the whole was white and opaque, as if it were a
flocculent precipitate. Fine specimens from this locality are in the
Peabody Museum of Yale University, in New Haven, Conn., the William S.
Vaux Collection, at the Academy of Natural Sciences, in Philadelphia,
Pa,, and the Bement Collection in the same city. The largest beryls of
the world are found at Grafton and Acworth, N. H. From the former
locality a crystal 6 1/4 feet long was quarried and another weighing over 2 1/2 tons. One obtained from the Acworth Quarries was 4 feet long and 2 1/2 feet
in diameter. One of the best known is on exhibition in the rooms of the
Boston Society of Natural History. (See Illustration.) It is a
hexagonal prism, 3 1/2 feet long by 3 feet wide, and weighs several
tons. There is also an immense beryl in the United States National
Museum, that weighs over 600 pounds. These large crystals are of a
pale-green color. Some very large crystals still remain in the
quarries, where they can be seen, but their extraction is a matter of
considerable expense, as it involves the moving of a great deal of
rock, and, moreover, it is very difficult to get them out whole, since
the material of which beryls are composed is very brittle and filled
with rifts, and a slight jar is sufficient to break them when they are
not well supported; large crystals, consequently, have always been
securely hooped before any attempt was made to move them. Such
specimens rarely have transparent spots so large as to
1 Am. J. Sci. III., Vol. 33, p. 505, June, 18S7.
