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Ch. 2: Precious Gem stones in 1892

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770
MINERAL RESOURCES.
  
 
 
  
 
Peridot (olivine chrysolite) is found in the form of small olive-green pitted grains in the sands of Arizona and New Mexico and at Ison's mills, Elliott county, Kentucky. In the two former localities they are called Job's tears (on account of their pitted appearance). These afford smaller gems than those from the Levant. As the demand seems to be for large peridots of the richer olive-green color, which is not possessed by those from the United States, $5,000 would be an outside valuation for the American peridots cut into gems since 1880.
Olivine in meteorites. There have been found in several instances in the United States Eagle Station, Carroll county, Kentucky, and Kiowa county, Kansas meteorites of the type known as pallasites, containing olivine in crystals or masses disseminated through the iron. Some of these olivine grains have beiyi fine enough to furnish good peridot gems. The meteorite found in Kiowa county, Kansas, is a true pallasites with very sharply defined crystals of bright yellow olivine, which break out and leave their casts in the iron; the one from Carroll county, Kentucky, consists largely of olivine with the iron traversing it in irregular meshes and fillings. In the Turner and Liberty mounds in the Little Miami valley, Ohio, some pieces have been found both natural and hammered into articles of use or ornament of a similar pallasite iron, but apparently not identical with either of these other falls, and in the meteorite found in G-lorietta mountain, Santa Fe county, New Mexico, olivine grains were found, and from all four of these meteorites the olivine has been cut into what might truly be called a celestial gem.
Quartz (roelc crystal) has been fouud near Long Shoal creek, on a spur of Phoenix mountain, in Chestnut Hill township, North Carolina, also at two places 600 feet apart (about 1 mile from the former crystals), one weighing 285 pounds, that was 29 inches long, 18 inches wide, and 13 inches thick, showing one pyramidal termination entirely perfect and the other partly so; also another specimen that weighed 188 pounds, as well as many pieces weighing from 10 to 50 pounds each. A crystal ball over 5 inches in diameter, and a number of art objects made from the rock crystals found, were exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition ; these were all of American work. A rock crystal ball from the summit of Mount Antero, Colorado, was shown in the Mines and Mining building of the World's Columbian Exposition. It measured a trifle less than 6 inches in diameter. It is not perfect, but quite equal to the crystal balls of the eighteenth century.
At Lake George, in Herkimer county, and throughout the adjacent regions in New York, the calciferous sand rock contains single crystals and at times large cavities are found filled with doubly terminated crystals often remarkably perfect and brilliant. These are collected in numbers, and both natural and cut specimens are mounted in jewelry and sold to tourists under the name of " Lake G-eorge diamonds." A remarkably choice collection of fine quartz crystals was shown by Mr. A.
  
 
 
  
       
Ch. 2: Precious Gem stones in 1892 Page of 76 Ch. 2: Precious Gem stones in 1892
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US Geol. Surv. 1892. Gemstones, Metals.
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