In the following pages we intend to treat not merely of precious stones strictly so called - that is, such mineral substances as have in all times at­tracted the attention of man by their hardness, their brilliancy, their colour, their scarcity, &c, but also of a certain number of productions which have nothing in common with the true precious stones, either in composition or origin, but which as articles of finery and adornment play precisely the same part as the latter. When we contemplate the boundless wealth of nature we might imagine that the number of precious stones would be unlimited; but this, as we shall see, is far from being the case. We must remark, however, that it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the most common predates stones and ordinary stones, since we have here a particular case of the grand law formulated more than a century ago by the illustrious Linnaeus.

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Dieulafait Diamonds and Precious Stones