492 MINERAL RESOURCES.
Silicified wood.—Wood
agate, wood opal, and silicified woods of all kiuds are found in great
abundance in Colorado, California, and others of the ■western States
and Territories. For colors, variety, and the polish they admit, they
are unequaled elsewhere: a great many articles of cheap jewelry/ and a
variety of fancy articles are made from this ma-terial and are sold
principally to tourists. Some pieces having a marked and desirable
peculiarity or beauty are often sold at fancy prices. The quantity
annually cut and sold amounts to nearly $10,000. and besides a large
quantity is sold as cabinet specimens.
Jasper.—Jasper
is found at many localities and in a great variety of colors in the
United States. A flue green jasper is reported to have been found at
Norman's Kill, (a) New York, fine red, yellow, and brown at
Murphy's, Calaveras county, California, in great variety, and also in
parts of Colorado. Near Colyer, Graham county, Kansas, is a bed of
banded jasper; the colors are mainly red and yellow, with bands of
white, and these bands are so remarkably even that the stone would
furnish an excellent material for cameo work. Should this style of
jewelry come into vogue again this may prove of considerable value; as
it is, the beautiful red and yellow are so strikingly relieved by the
white that it makes a fine ornamental stone. Jasper is very little used
in the arts, for so common a stone, and the entire annual sales would
not be more than $1,000.
Novaculite.—Novaculite
is found at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and has been used to a very limited
extent for cutting figures, such as owls and birds, for jewelry. It is
pure white, and makes a very pretty ornamental stone. The amount sold
is now less than $100 worth per annum.
Epidote.—Epidote,
althougk found in many localities in the United States aud in very
large crystals ranging from brown to green in color, is only
translucent or semi-opaque wheu in very minute crystals, and no
American gems of this mineral have come to our notice.
Idocrase.—Idocrase,
although found in fine crystals of a dark-brown color at Warren, New
Hampshire, Sanford and Eaymond, Maine, and other localities, rarely
occurs with sufficient transparency to cut even small desirable gems.
Chrysolite, olivine, peridot.—Peridot
is found of very good quality in small, olive-green, pitted grains or
pebbles, associated with garnet and sapphire, in the sands of Arizona,
New Mexico, Colorado, and Montana. This material affords smaller gems
than those from the Levant, and as the demand seems to be for the large
peridots and also the richer olive-green color peculiar to these, and
not to the American, for these reasons only a small number of the
American are cut into gems, and $500 will fully cover the amount sold
annually.
