Excerpt from Precious Stones in Nature, Art, and LiteratureIt is not easy, nor, perhaps, desirable, to give a list of all the writers from whom assistance, either directly or indirectly, has been obtained, since they are scattered through various departments Of knowledge, but many of them have been referred to in the text, and if a thought has been borrowed without specifying the definite source whence it was taken, it has usually been because it could be traced to several authors, showing that either the idea was native to all, or that all had Obtained it from the same source.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.