some
children in Holland were playing in a court-yard on a summer day with a
few bright-coloured stones indifferently given to them by some
lapidaries, who evidently had not classified, or invested them with
any particular value or significance. The children's keenness of
observation revealed that when their bright playthings became heated
by the sun's rays, they attracted and held ashes and straws. The
children appealed to their parents for enlightenment as to the cause
of this mysterious property; but they were unable to explain or to
identify the stones, giving them, however, the name of aschentreckers or ash-drawers, which for a long time clung to these tourmalines.
The
story of the tourmaline in the western hemisphere is an object-lesson
for those adults who have no indulgence for the scientific enterprise
of the young, or faith in the possibility of valuable results from
their immature investigation. The principal source of the best
American tourmalines is a mine on Mount Mica at Paris, Maine. Gem
tourmalines were discovered on Mount Mica on an autumn day in 1820 by
two boys, Elijah L. Hamlin and Ezekiel Holmes, amateur mineralogists.
When nearing home from a fatiguing local prospecting expedi-
