BIT OF A LETTER WITH SKETCH OF SNOW CRYSTALS
By John Ruskin
His "Catalogue of a series of specimens in the British Museum (Natural History) illustrative of the more common forms of Native Silica" (George Allen, 1884) to a certain extent suggests his agate theory. This is well worth looking through when a visit to the Museum gives the reader an opportunity of comparing these beautiful stones, many of them presented by Ruskin, who also gave the great jewels he called the Colenso diamond and the Edwardes ruby (after his friend Sir Herbert Edwardes, whose life he wrote in "A Knight's Faith").
DIAMOND DIAGRAM
By John Ruskin
Another printed catalogue, running to fifty pages, was written to expound a collection given to St. David's School, Reigate (the Rev. W. H. Churchill's, now at Stonehouse, Broadstairs) in 1883. A third collection, similarly catalogued, was given to Kirkcudbright Museum, and others to Whitelands College, Chelsea, and the St. George's (now called the Ruskin) Museum, Sheffield. These do not exhaust the list of his gifts, but serve to show how eager he was to share his interests with boys and girls, working men and the big public, who must surely, he thought, love these phases of Nature's beauty when they had opportunity of seeing them.
After the illness of 1878 which set him aside from Oxford work, he took to stones of all sorts with ardour. Even at Oxford he had not quite forgotten them: the lecture called "The Iris of the Earth" (given in London, February 1876) is a poetical miscellany of jewel-lore. While he was at work on this at Oxford he sent the college messenger round with a pressing note for one of his pupils to come at once. "I want to know what gules means. Run to Professor —— and Professor —— and find out. The books say it means gueule, the red of a wild beast's throat, but that is too nasty." "Why not gul? I think that is Persian for rose," said the pupil. "Wonderful!" said he; "In the gardens of Gul! Of course!" And down it went in the lecture.