Excerpt from Gems and Precious Stones of North America: A Popular Description of Their Occurrence, Value, History, Archæology, and of the Collections in Which They Exist, Also a Chapter on Pearls and on Remarkable Foreign Gems Owned in the United States
The daily yield from the coal and iron mines, or from the South African diamond mines, or a week's yield of the granite quarries, would exceed in value the entire output of precious stones found in the United States during a year. Systematic search for gems and precious stones has been carried on in only two States Maine and North Carolina. Otherwise, the gems are found accidentally, in connection with other substances that are being mined, or in small veins which are only occasionally met with, as the turquoise in Mexico. They are often gathered on the surface, as is the case with garnet or olivine from Arizona and New Mexico; or in sluicing for gold, as the sapphires from Montana; or in connection with mica mining, as the beryl from Connecticut and North Carolina; or from the beds of streams and decomposing rocks, as the moss-agate from Wyoming; or on the beaches, as the agate, chlorastrolite, and thomsonite from the shores of Lake Superior.
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