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328 GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES IN THE
Bishop,
Brayton Ives, William C. Oastler, John Harper, Samuel P. Avery, Charles
Stewart Smith, Edward G. Low, Thomas B. Clarke, James W. Ellsworth, and
James A. Garland, of New York; Samuel M. Nickerson and Potter Palmer,
of Chicago; William T. Walters, of Baltimore ; Frederick Ames, Dr.
Bigelow, and Quincy Shaw, of Boston. There is a good collection at the
Peabody Museum, Yale College, gathered and bequeathed by Dr. S. Wells
Williams, formerly Secretary of Legation at Pekin, and author of the
standard work on China, " The Middle Kingdom." Of foreign collectors
who have a notable quantity of jade objects, there are Alfred Morrison,
of London; Messrs. Bing and Gentian and Vicomte de Samalle, of Paris.
The Louvre and the Musee de Fontainebleau contain some specimens of
great interest, and the South Kensington Museum has quite a large and
valuable collection.
Explorations
in Alaska have brought to light the fact that jade was used by the
natives of Alaska for making implements ; almost conclusive proof,
also, has been offered to show that it is found, not only as boulders,
but in place. The United States National Museum at Washington; the
Emmons Collection, and that of James Terry in the American Museum of
Natural History; the Everett Collection ; the Peabody Collection, at
Cambridge, Mass.; the collections in the Canadian Geological Survey at
Ottawa, and the Peter Redpath Museum, McGill College, Montreal, Can.;
the Dresden Collection ; the Freiberg Collection, at Baden ; and
others, including the writer's own, contain several hundred objects
made from this very interesting material found in Alaska and British
Columbia.
For
nearly ten years fresh-water pearls, jade, rock crystal, rhodonite, and
other stones have been used in the decoration of high-class silverware
and some examples were shown at the World's Fair, held in Paris during
1889.
Taste
in household decoration in the United States has of late attained a
high standard, and any new idea that has been applied elsewhere is at
once made use of. Minerals as yet have been only slightly utilized
because they have not been thoroughly understood, and because of the
absence of any accepted method of so applying them as to avoid
inappropriateness. Ruskin, the
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