Rose quartz is found in the granitic veins of Oxford County, Maine, and in 1887, 1888, and 1889 probably $500 worth of this material was procured and worked into small spheres, dishes, charms, and other ornamental objects.
The well-known agatized and jasperized wood of Arizona is so much richer in color than that obtained from any other known locality that, since the problem of cutting and polishing the large sections used for table tops and other ornamental purposes was solved, fully $50,000 worth of the rough material has been gathered and over $100,000 worth of it has been cut and polished. This wood, which was a very prominent feature at the Paris Exposition, promises to become one of our richest ornamental materials.
Chlorastrolite in pebbles is principally found on the inside and outside shores of Rock Harbor, a harbor about eight miles in length on the east end of Isle Royale, Lake Superior, where they occur from the size of a pin head to, rarely, the size of a pigeon's egg. When larger than a pea they frequently are very poor in form or are hollow in fact, and unfit for cutting into gems. They are collected in a desultory manner, and are sold by jewelers of Duluth, Petoskey, and other cities, principally to visitors. The annual sale ranges from $200 to $1,000.
Thomsonite in pebbles occurs with the chlorastrolite at Isle Royal, but finer stones are found on the beach at Grand Marais, Cook County, Minnesota. Like the chlorastrolites, they result from the weathering of the amygdaloid rock, in which they occur as small nodules, and in the same manner are sold by jewelers in the cities bordering on Lake Superior to the extent of $200 to $1,000 worth annually.
In New York there are sixteen firms engaged in cutting and recutting diamonds, and in Massachusetts there are three. Cutting has also been carried on at times in Pennsylvania and Illinois, but has been discontinued. The firms that were fully employed were generally the larger ones, whose business consisted chiefly in repairing chipped or imperfectly cut stones or in recutting stones previously cut abroad, which, owing to the superior workmanship in command here, could be recut at a profit, or in recutting very valuable diamonds when it was desired, with the certainty that the work could be done under their own supervision, thus guarding against any possible loss by exchange for inferior stones.
