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Turquoise

The turquoise is a pseudomorph.

In colour it is blue or greenish-blue, sometimes opaque, varying between that and feeble translucency, though it should be said that in all forms, even those considered opaque, a thin cutting of the stone appears almost transparent, so that the usual classing of it among the opaque stones must be [...]

Lapis-Lazuli

The lapis-lazuli, sometimes called “azure stone,” is almost always blue, though often containing streaks of white and gold colour, the latter of which are due to the presence of minute specks or veins of iron pyrites, the former and colourless streaks being due to free lime, calcite, and other substances which have become more or [...]

Silicates

The chief of these are the garnets, crystallising in the cubic system, and anhydrous.

The garnet is usually in the form of a rhombic dodecahedron, or as a trisoctahedron (called also sometimes an icosatetrahedron), or a mixture of the two, though the stones appear in other cubic forms.

In hardness they vary from [...]

Zircon

Zircon appears to have been first discovered by Klaproth in 1789, in the form of an earth, and six years later he found that the stone hyacinth contained a similar substance, both having the formula, ZrSiO4, and both having as their colouring agent ferric oxide.

There are several methods of obtaining the metallic element, [...]

Tourmaline

The tourmaline is a most complex substance; almost every stone obtained has a different composition, some varying but slightly, with mere traces of certain constituents which other stones possess in a perceptible degree.

Consequently, it is not possible to give the chemical formula, which might, and possibly would, be found but seldom, even in [...]