Alexandrite
There are a few talismanic stones which have gained their repute in our time, notably the alexandrite, a variety of chrysoberyl found in Russia, in the emerald mines on the Takowaya, in the Ural region. The discovery of this variety is stated to have been made in 1831 on the day Alexander II (then heir-apparent) reached his majority, and it was therefore named alexandrite, by Nordenskjöld, the mineralogist. The stone as found in gem form rarely weighs over from one to three carats, and is characterized by a marked pleochroism of a splendid green changing to a beautiful columbine red. But in Ceylon much larger gems are found, some few weighing 60 carats each, although rarely of more than one or two carats. The color is of a darker and more bottle-like green, and the change by night renders them darker and more granitized than the Russian stones, which are extremely rare. As red and green are the Russian national colors, the alexandrite has become a great favorite with the Russians, and is looked upon as a stone of good omen in that country. Such, however, is its beauty as a gem that its fame is by no means confined to Russia, and it is eagerly sought in other lands as well.
Amber
Amber was one of the first substances used by man for decoration, and it was also employed at a very early period for amulets and for medicinal purposes. More or less shapeless pieces of rough amber, marked with circular depressions, have been found in Prussia, Schleswig-Holstein, and Denmark, in deposits of the Stone Age. These depressions are sometimes regularly disposed and at other times irregularly, and seem intended to imitate similar depressions found in large stones and rocks, often the work of man’s hand, but occasionally the result of natural causes. In Hoernes’ opinion they marked the resting place of the spirit or spirits believed to animate the stone, and hence it is probable that the amber fragments were used as talismans or amulets.[44]
For the ancient Greek poets, the grains of amber were the tears annually shed over the death of their brother Phaëthon by the Heliades after grief had metamorphosed them into poplars growing on the banks of the Eridanus (the modern river Po).[45] In a lost tragedy of Sophocles, he saw the origin of amber in the tears shed over the death of Meleager by certain Indian birds. For Nicias it was the “juice” or essence of the brilliant rays of the setting sun, congealed in the sea and then cast up upon the shore. A more prosaic explanation likened amber to resin, and regarded it as being an exudation from the trunks of certain trees. Indeed, the poetic fancy we have just noted is the same idea clothed in a metaphorical or mythological form. Another fancy represented amber to be the solidified urine of the lynx, hence one of its names, lyncurius.[46]
THE TREE THAT EXUDES AMBER.
From the “Hortus Sanitatis,” of Johannis de Cuba [Strassburg, Jean Pryss, ca. 1483]; De lapidibus, cap. lxx. Author’s library.
The brilliant and beautiful yellow of certain ambers and the fact that this material was very easily worked served to make its use more general, and it soon became a favorite object of trade and barter between the peoples of the Baltic Coast and the more civilized peoples to the south. Schliemann found considerable amber from the Baltic in the graves of Mycenæ, and the frequent allusions to it in the works of Latin authors of the first and succeeding centuries testify to its popularity in the Roman world.