streams.
Fifth, the fact that jade has been found elsewhere on the continent
although jadeite has not. In 1884, among a quantity of things sent to
the National Museum from Point Barrow, were some hammer-heads, supposed
to be jade, but, on analysis by Prof. Frank W. Clarke, found to be a
new compact variety of pecto-lite,1 with a specific gravity
of 2.873. (See Pectolite.) Some early writers have attributed Alaskan
nephrite to Siberian sources, but four or five years ago it was
determined to be of native origin. The native reports assigned as its
source a place known as Jade Mountain, about 150 miles above the mouth
of the Kowak River, and after several attempts the spot was visited by
Lieut. G. M. Stoney, U. S. N., who collected a series of specimens. The
material was of a grayish-green color and splintery lamellar
structure, one variety being more granular, brownish in color, and
highly foliated in form. Sixth, according to Bernardino de Sahagun, all
the green stones of the Aztecs were simply varieties of the
chalchihuitl, and it is not improbable, as has been supposed by some,
that jadeite, like turquoise, was one of the varieties of chalchihuitl,
and perhaps the most prized. This theory has been greatly strengthened
during the last ten years, and especially since Professor Frederick W.
Putnam exhibited his remarkable series of Nicaraguan and Costa Rican
jadeites before the American Antiquarian Society, in April, 1886.
Professor
Clarke and George P. Merrill concluded their examination of the Jade
Collection in the United States National Museum with the suggestions:
Confirmation of the theory that the widely scattered jadeite and
nephrite objects were derived from many independent sources, and are of
no value whatever in the work of tracing the migration and
intercommunication of races, lies in the fact that these substances are
comparatively common constituents of matamorphic rocks, and hence
liable to be found wherever these rocks occur, so that their presence
is as meaningless as would be the presence of a piece of graphite. The
natives required a hard, tough substance, capable of receiving and
retaining a sharp edge and a polish, and took it wherever it was to be
found.
Rock crystal has not, in our time at least, been discovered,
1 Am. J. Sci. III., Vol. 28, p. 20, Jan., 1884.
