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Most wonderful specimens of rutilated quartz are the great, rich brown, possibly titanium-colored masses in the Morgan Collection at the American Museum of Natural History, that in the Vaux Collection at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and a smaller mass in the British Museum; these were all obtained near Middlesex, Vermont. The rutile is a rich transparent or translucent red, varying in thinness from that of an ordinary needle to that of a knitting-needle, and even to that of a thin lead-pencil. Wonderful specimens are also found in the Alps of St. Gothard, in Madagascar, and in Alexander County, North Carolina, where they are found in quantity as minute crystals of a rich red or golden yellow.
Other curious and interesting rock-crystals with inclusions are those showing enclosed drops of water, the kind termed enhydros by Pliny and many old writers; in some of the rarer specimens the enclosed water is present in considerable quantity. Quartz with inclusions of this type was highly appreciated in the Greco-Roman world, and one of the best poets of the Decadence, Claudian (fl. about 400 A.D.), composed a series of poetic epigrams upon them, seven of these being in Latin and two in Greek. An example of the best in each tongue, the first in the former and the second in the latter, must be of interest, although the literal prose version cannot have the charm of the original verse.
The Alpine ice, already precious in its frigidity, acquires an intense hardness through the action of the solar rays, but unable to transform itself entirely into a gem, it betrays its original source by the water that still remains within it. This adds at once to the beauty of this liquid stone and to its value.
In its changeful aspect, this crystal born from snow and fashioned by the hand of man is an image of the world, of the heavens enclosing cruel ocean in their wide embrace.
An old superstition among the Laplanders of Sweden is that in order to avert or cure disease which may be or has been caused by sleeping in the open air on the exposed moorland, three pebbles should be gathered, one from the water, one out of the earth, and the third from the surface of the ground or "from the air." These are placed on a fire until they become red-hot, and are then thrown into water; the stone which sizzles most is that belonging to the element which has caused the illness. The whole body, or sometimes only the afflicted part, is to be moistened with the water in which the pebbles have been immersed, and each separate stone is to be carefully returned to the spot whence it was taken. |
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Precious Stones Guide Vol 8
>> About The Morgan Collection of Rock Crystals at The American Museum of Natural History
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