| The most desirable and valuable of the Garnet | | | | 35th Street in New York, uncovered a garnet weighing |
| gemstone are clear blood-red, cherry-red or violet-red | | | | ten pounds and measuring more than six inches in |
| gems, which may have a brilliancy that compares | | | | diameter. These huge stones cannot be used as gem |
| favorably with the sapphire. The olive to deep green | | | | material, however, because they are too coarse in |
| stones are occasionally sold as "olivine" and "peridot", | | | | structure, spotted and badly flawed and opaque. The |
| varieties of chrysolite which they resemble. Garnets | | | | finest rarely exceed the first joint of one's thumb in |
| range in specific gravity (or weight compared with the | | | | size, while the average is only slightly larger than a |
| weight of an equal volume of water) from 3 to 4.30. | | | | large pea. |
| The specific gravity of the Earth is about 5.5 although | | | | The best varieties are worth from $1.50 to $5.00 a |
| the earth's crust is but 2.7. Their degrees of hardness | | | | carat, which is one-fifth of a metric gram, and on the |
| lie between 6 and 8 on the lapidary's scale, which | | | | average bring about $3.50 a carat. These gems are |
| means that the softest will be scratched by a good | | | | used in all types of jewelry-bar-pins, brooches, |
| file, while the hardest, uvarovite and some kinds of | | | | festoons, pendants, rings, cuff links, scarf-pins, beads |
| andradite, will abrade quartz or "rock crystal." Quite | | | | and neck-chains. The lowest priced jewelry is the |
| large quantities of the harder stones not suitable for | | | | so-called "Bohemian Garnet Jewelry" made by |
| gem purposes are ground for use as abrasives. These | | | | Czecho-Slovakian peasants, and varies from $2.50 to |
| gems are usually found in beautiful crystal forms of | | | | about $40.00. Better class types cost from $15 to $50 |
| geometric regularity species. Sometimes they appear | | | | for ladies' rings, and $30 to $300 for festoons and |
| in globules or rounded seed-like disseminations | | | | necklaces. |
| scattered like raisins in a bread pudding through a | | | | Of course, jewelry set in platinum or platinum with |
| matrix of mica schist or gneiss. | | | | diamonds or pearls may range in price into the |
| Evidently they were named from deposits of the latter | | | | thousands of dollars. You January-born cannot help but |
| type, for the word "garnet" is derived from granatin, | | | | be proud to wear your birthstone. Perhaps through the |
| meaning "seed-like" or "grain-like". Nearly every country | | | | centuries it has lost the mystical powers the ancients |
| in the world contributes them, with German East | | | | ascribed to it, but it has not given up a single iota of its |
| Africa, Australia, Bohemia, Brazil, Ceylon, India, Uruguay, | | | | warm, rich beauty, nor any of its burning glow, which |
| and the United States supplying the most valuable | | | | was thought to be a living fire by primitive peoples. It is |
| types. The largest crystals come from Salida, | | | | a stone that always is distinctive, whatever the type of |
| Colorado, and one of them of which I know weighed | | | | jewelry in which it appears. |
| 1,414 pounds. In 1885, workmen, excavating on West | | | | |