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A PRECIOUS
WORTH-
WHY?
D. STEVERS
minute shadings in color will flow
along lines, while in the other this
is not the case. You mention this
difference, and he smiles.
"Yes, you have hit it. One was
mined in Burma—that is the one
with the bubbles and colorings in
lines. The other was made in a
laboratory."
"But then it is an imitation," you
protest.
"No it is not," he answers. "It
is a genuine ruby—same chemical
composition, same structure, same
properties. Only instead of being
produced from its constituent elements
by natural heat, it has been
produced by artificial heat in a
Verneuil blow pipe. It is a synthetic
ruby."
And that matter of origin is absolutely
all that determines the difference
in value. In matters of lustre, cut, hardness,
durability—the points which are
said to determine the value of a gem—
the two are equal, or—as will often be
the case—let us say that the synthetic
ruby may even be the better of the two.
To the logical mind, it would seem that
either the synthetic stone should be given
a greater value than that of the mined
one, as a premium for its excellence, or
that the mined one should be appraised
at a figure lower than that for the synthetic
one, as a penalty for inferiority.
But no; you and I will pay ten times the
price for the inferior stone, merely because
it was dug from the earth.
After all, the matter of evaluating
precious stones is a great deal like forecasting
the weather, in that both tasks
still seem to be altogether in the realm
Each Precious Stone Has a History; Before Ever It Is
Offered for Sale It May Have Cost the Lives of Many Men.
The Natives Who Grub for It in the Bowels of the Earth
May Have Killed Each Other for the Wealth That Its
Scintillating Depths Would Bring. If It Is an Exceptional
Diamond. Some Adventure of This Sort Almost Certainly
Heralded Its Discovery
of guesswork. There are as many twists
and turns to the matter of evaluating
gems as there are to the task of understanding
women's preferences in fashions.
The fundamental element of value in
any gem is its beauty. None of us
would buy a diamond that had no fire,
no matter how finely it were cut, how
flawless its texture might be, no matter
how expensive it might have been to
mine and prepare. The prime essential
of a diamond is that it shall "live", shall
be a point of fire, shall radiate cold flame
when disposed about your person; and if
it does not do that, it is valueless to you
and therefore to everyone else. So also
with other stones; pearls must have their
lustre, opals their glow, rubies, sapphires,
and emeralds their depths of liquid red,
blue, and green light.
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