vitreous; it is transparent to opaque. Most varieties of garnet fuse to brown or black glass.
In Dana's Mineralogy, Garnet is Carbunculus dodecahedrus: order
Hyalina. In crystallography the primary form of garnet is the rhombic
dodecahedron. The cleavage is indistinct parallel with the faces of the
dodecahedron. Besides the primary twelve-sided form, with rhombic
faces, the secondary forms of garnet crystals include
trapezohedrons—twenty-four-sided forms
__with faces shaped like trapeziums; then there
are
combinations of these forms, one of which has thirty-sis faces. The
tendency of garnet is to crystallise and it is usually found in
crystals; these range from tiny ones the size of a grain of sand up to
those of several pounds in weight.
The name garnet, according to one version, is derived from the Latin granatus, meaning like a grain, because of the resemblance of its crystals in size and colour to the seeds of the pomegranate.
A
carbuncle, in the popular conception, is a specific precious stone, but
it does not exist in scientific mineralogy, and in the verbiage of
dealers now, its meaning is merely any worthy red translucent stone cut
en cabochon. Some writers, who seem otherwise generally well in-
