ten a tendency among dealers to confuse various green
stones, and even doublets, under the name _emerald_. While the price
charged usually bears a fair relation to the value of the material
furnished, it would be better to offer tourmaline, or peridot (the
mineral name of which is olivine), or demantoid garnet (sometimes
wrongly called "Olivine"), or "emerald doublets," or emerald or
"imitation emerald," as the case might be, under their own names.
There are no true "synthetic" or "scientific" or "reconstructed"
emeralds, and none of these terms should be used by the trade. There
has been an effort made in some cases to do business upon the good
reputation of the scientific rubies and sapphires, but the products
offered, when not out and out glass imitations, have usually been
doublets or triplets, consisting partly of some pale, inexpensive,
natural mineral, such as quartz or beryl, and a layer of deep green
glass to give the whole a proper color. All attempts to melt real
emerald or beryl have yielded only a _beryl glass_, softer and lighter
than true emerald, and not _crystalline_, but rather glassy in
structure. Hence the names "reconstructed," "synthetic" and "scientific"
should never be applied to emerald.
The light green and blue green beryls are correctly called
_aquamarines_, the pale sky-blue beryls should be named simply _blue
beryl_. Yellow beryl may be called _golden beryl_, or it may be called
"_heliodor_," a name that was devised for the fine yellow beryl of
Madagascar. Beautiful pink beryl from Madagascar has been called
"_morganite_," a name that deserves to live in order to commemorate the
great interest taken by J. Pierpont Morgan in collecting and conserving
for future generations many of the gems in the American Museum of
Natural History in New York.
ZIRCON. We now come to a number of minerals slightly less hard than
beryl, but harder than quartz, and _zircon_ is perhaps as hard as any of
these, so it will be considered next. Red zircon, which is rare, is
properly called "_hyacinth_." Many Hessonite garnets (cinnamon stones)
are incorrectly called hyacinths, however. The true hyacinth has more
snap and fire owing to its adamantine surface luster and high dispersive
power, as well as to its high refractive index. A true hyacinth is a
beautiful stone. Golden yellow zircons are correctly called
"_jacinths_." Artificially whitened zircons (the color of which has been
removed by heating) are known
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