|
6 Where Precious Stones are Found.
|
||
|
|
||
|
writers
on gems that these beautiful productions of the mineral world should be
mainly confined to tropical countries. What more natural than the
conjecture that those favoured regions which gave birth to
gaily-coloured birds and gorgeous butterflies and flowers of surpassing
loveliness should also produce minerals of the rarest brilliancy and
beauty ! Yet such a supposition is purely fanciful.
Precious
Stones, in truth, are not confined to definite geographical limits or
to particular climates, but occur abundantly and in about equal
perfection in all latitudes. Nor do the gem stones of one country
necessarily differ from those of other parts of the world. The Diamonds
of India, for example, are hardly, if at all, to be distinguished,
when polished, from those found in the Ural mountains, or in Brazil, or
at the Jagersfontein Mine in South Africa. The Emerald of New Granada,
again, is much the same as that which is found in Queen Cleopatra's
mines in Upper Egypt or at Katharineburg, in the Urals. The Beryl of
Siberia has proved no unequal rival to that of Brazil, and the
Amethysts of the Bavarian Palatinate equal those found in the most
favoured spots of South America.
It
is not, indeed, the geographical position which determines the
difference between the relative values of the sites. Nevertheless it is
an acknowledged fact that in India, Burma, Ceylon, Siam, Brazil, and in
some of the Western States of America, a greater abundance of them has
been discovered than elsewhere.
The
Ancients were wont to ascribe the pre-eminence of certain regions in
which Precious Stones are found to evaporation from the earth which
would obviously be more intense in tropical countries. It was a
supposition pardonably fanciful, that the sunburnt tropics were more
|
||
|
|
||