Where Precious Stones are Found Page 20



	CHAPTER II.

	WHERE PRECIOUS STONES ARE FOUND.



	is a familiar fact that Organic Nature does not present an equal development of life in every part of the world. Each country—or at least each zone of climate—has its own fauna and flora—its peculiar assemblage of animals and plants. No one needs to be reminded that the animals and plants of the tropics are widely different from those of temperate zones, while these again differ from those of the Polar regions. But when we turn to the Inorganic world, we fail to detect any similar laws of distribution. Climate, so far as we know, is without sensible effect on the development of minerals and rocks. Many minerals are common to the hottest and the coldest' parts of the world; yet they present no discernible difference whether brought from tropical or from Polar regions. It is true that occasionally there are slight local differences in crystallization, or in other physical characters, sufficient to enable an experienced mineralogist to say at once from what district a given mineral has been obtained. But these trivial differences are due rather to geological than to geographical conditions, and climatic influences have nothing whatever to do with the distribution of minerals. Nor is this general rule in any way broken by those exceptional minerals which we distinguish as Precious Stones. It was a pardonable supposition of ancient