Arizona republican. [volume] (Phoenix, Ariz.) 1890-1930, 1919-11-09

again place the stone under the micro
scope. In this way the enterprising
crook sold several synthetic stones at
a profit of a thousand dollars or more
each.
1t is claimed that diamonds have
been made synthetically also, but this
is not true, according to Mr.. Schaller.
Good limitations of diamonds are made
from glass, of course, both for pur-
poses of fraud, and for society women
to wear in public while leaving their
real gems at home. These glass dia-
monds are made of a special soft glass
which has exactly the same retroactive
power as a diamond. They look exact
ly like diamonds. The only difference
is that they are not as hard and will
not wear as long. They must be pol
ished and touched up once in whole.
Another result of the growing pre-
ciousness of precious stones has been
to stimulate the use of the less pre-
cious, but in many cases very beauti-
full stones. Garnets, opals, turquoise,
topaz, tourmalines and chrysoprase are
some of the better known of these but
there are numerous others Even
quartz, one of the commonest min
erals in nature, is quite widely used
in jewelry.
Many of these stones are nearly, if
not quite, as beautiful as the more
valuable ones. but there is an unfor-
tunate tendency to sell them under
false names. Thus garnets alone have
been sold under some fifty different
names, such as American ruby. Ari-
iona ruby, Bohemian diamond, alman-
dite, Ceylon hyacinth, guarnaccino.
hessonite, Uralian emerald, and others
equally fantastic. The chief result
Of this is that the customer does not
know what he is getting and hence
has no idea what it is worth He asks
in amazement what a Uralian emerald
is, and the storekeeper perhaps tells
him that it is something new and rare
and may thus be able to get an excess
sive price for the stone. But in the
long run, this makes people suspicious
of all the cheaper stones, and tends
to defeat legitimate trade in these
really beautiful gems, An excellent
and somewhat fragrant example of
this camouflage jewel business was
seen in Atlantic City, where ordinary
quartz, stained yellow by iron in it's
composition, was sold under the name
Of "Apricotine' for quite fancy
price.
In an effort to check such practices.
MI. Schaller has prepared an alpha
betleal list in which all of the precious
ana semi-precious stones are includ-
ed, together with the names under
which they have been sold. BY means
OF this list anyone can find out what
any stone offered him under a fancy
name really is.
The great war undoubtedly de-
stroyed many precious stones. They
were lost by civilians in hasty flight.
burned up in buildings, and buried on
dead bodies. Many large stones were
doubtless stolen by others, cut up into
smaller pieces and sold No one seems
to know what has happened to the
great jewel collection of the Russian
imperial government
1t is said that wealthy Germans took
many diamonds off the market when
they began to doubt the ability of Ger
many to win the war. Buy putting
! their money into diamonds they had
their wealth in a form which was
readily portable, and could easily he
concealed so as to escape taxation and
confiscatfon. These diamonds can
now be sold at greatly enhanced
| values.