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Sec. I, Ch. 3: Precious Stones & Their Uses in Bygone Times

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CHAPTER III.
PRECIOUS STONES AND THEIR USES IN BYGONE TIMES.
ISTORY and tradition testify to the fact that Precious Stones were valued and preserved thousands of years ago. In India, where the most costly were chiefly found, this was especially the case. Other lands, it is true, possessed Precious Stones, and handed them down from generation to generation, but probably knew less of their true worth or nature. Their transparency and dazzling beauty, their hardness and crystalline forms, must naturally haye always excited wonder, and induced men to treasure them as amulets, if not to use them as personal ornaments. We know that in the time of Solomon, the love of grace and luxury induced the rich to desire the possession of Precious Stones, and even to seek for them in foreign lands.
In Egypt, in ancient times, many stones were worked as scarabœan gems ; and we know that among the Jews the robes of the High Priest were set with Precious Stones. It is often difficult, in reading an ancient author, to know precisely what stone he intends to indicate, and ordinary translations of technical words are by no means to be trusted. This remark applies, for example, to the names of the stones of the breast-plate of the Jewish High Priest, as rendered in our Authorized Version. The names which the Hebrews gave to these stones indicate that they derived their knowledge of them from the Egyptians, who in common with other ancient races, knew but little of what
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