Ch. 7: Quartz Group - Opal, Rock Crystals, Amethysts, Rose Quartz, Agate, etc.

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	126	GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES IN THE

	Thetis' hair stone, found by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, near Sneatch Pond, Cumberland, R. I., is occasionally met with in fair pieces and is used to a very limited extent in jewelry. It is transparent quartz, so completely filled with acicular crystals of green actinolite as to make it quite opaque. Probably $100 worth was at one time sold annually to be cut into seals and charms. Acicular crystals of indicolite, somewhat resembling rutile in quartz, filling the quartz so completely as almost to render it opaque, were found in pieces over an inch square at the famous tourmaline locality, near Paris, Me. The mining operations at Stony Point, N. C, brought to light a number of crystals 4 by 3 inches, and masses of quartz 6 by 3 inches, some of the former filled with what appears to be asbes-tus or byssolite, forming interesting and pretty specimens susceptible of being cut into charms and other objects. The incisures of what is seemingly gothite in red, fan-shaped crystals from North Carolina is also a beautiful and interesting gem stone. A fine limpid crystal of quartz, 1 inch long and 3/2 inch in diameter, penetrated to the depth of half a millimeter by fine green crystals of actinolite, is reported from Virginia. The so-called Gibsonville emerald was a similar crystal of quartz, the crystals being 3 by 2 inches. It was plowed up in a field at Gibsonville, N. C, and when first found was believed to be an emerald. Some crystals of limpid quartz, containing particles of native gold, have been found in California. One of these was said to have been 1 inch long, and enclosed in the center was a scale of gold about the size of the lunula of a finger-nail. Two similar inclusions, though not so large, are in the possession of Rev. Horace C. Hovey, of Bridgeport, Conn. In Nevada County, Cal., in the Grass Valley Mines, quartz is occasionally found supporting gold between the crystals. Pellucid crystals of quartz, some 1 inch long and 3/4 inch across, filled with a very brilliant stibnite projecting in all directions, and some of them curiously bent, were found at the Little Dora Mine, Animas Forks, San Juan, Col. This material is capable of being made into very beautiful gems. A fine crystal 2 inches long and 1 inch in diameter is in the Tiffany Collection. The crystals of quartz from the Herkimer, N. Y., North Carolina, and

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