an appropriate use for colourless, yet lustrous, stones in any article of jewellery intended for personal adornment. The more lustrous and prismatic they are—the more they resemble the diamond, in fact—the less available are they for the usual purpose to which gems are put. Still, there are peculiar qualities in these stones which need not be lost to artistic employment, if the white stones in question be judiciously associated with materials which prevent their being mistaken for diamonds. A white diamond should rarely or never be bordered by green tourmalines, but these stones would form an agreeable combination with a white zircon, a phenakite, or a white topaz. In the white sapphire there is often a faint suspicion of milkiness, and in the white beryl a cool greenish tint, which prevent these stones from resembling the diamond so closely as to be taken for imitations of that gem. But many of these colourless stones, notably the topaz and rock crystal, in all probability are most appropriately used when set as bosses in vessels and other large pieces of metal work, or employed in the form of plaques for engraving or etching. It is scarcely necessary to justify such uses of these minerals, and this is not the place to enter upon the question, particularly as it is only by a rather wide use of the term precious that I am able to include these materials, and some others which I shall have to discuss presently, amongst precious stones. Of two other white materials employed in jewellery, the moonstone and the pearl, a few words may be introduced here. The moonstone forms an excellent substitute in many combinations for the pearl, but it does not associate so well as the latter with the diamond. With deep-coloured amethysts, spinels, and tourmalines, few colourless gems look more refined than the moonstone. But these stones, which fetch a shilling or so apiece only, should always be accurately recut and highly repolished before being used. Their forms are too irregular and their surfaces too imperfect, as imported from Ceylon, to show off their moonlight sheen with half its intensity, unless
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WHITE STONES.
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