Sec. IV, Ch. 23: Semi-Precious Stones - Moonstone, Selenite, and Sunstone

Sec. IV, Ch. 22: Semi-Precious Stones, Malachite

Page of 366

Sec. IV, Ch. 23: Semi-Precious Stones - Moonstone, Selenite, and Sunstone

Text size:



	CHAPTER XXIII. MOONSTONE, SELENITE, AND SUNSTONE.

	INERALOGISTS of the present day apply the name Selenite to the finer varieties of Gypsum —a common mineral much too soft to be of any real service in jewellery, yet presenting in its fibrous forms so pleasing a lustre as to be occasionally cut and polished as an ornamental stone. This fibrous Gypsum or Selenite occurs in the New Red Marls of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and especially in the neighbourhood of Newark, in Nottinghamshire, where it is worked to a limited extent into beads and other trivial objects. Selenite derives its name from its soft lustre, suggestive of moonshine ; but though the word literally signifies " moonstone," no jeweller would think of designating it by such a term—the word " moonstone " being invarably applied to an entirely different stone. " The Selenite," says Adreas Baccius, " is a kind of gem which doth contain in it the image of the moon, and it doth represent it increasing and decreasing according to the increase and decrease of the moon, in its monthly changes." The Greeks called it Aphroselene, which signifies the splendour of the moon, or a beam of the moon, whilst the Romans called it Lunaris. Dioscorides says "it is found in Arabia, and is endued with virtues, as of making trees fruitful, and of curing epilepsy ; " he adds that " in the night it will illuminate the place that is next to it." Whatever the Moonstone of the Ancients may have been, the Moonstone of the present day is an opalescent

Page of 366