SAPPHIRE, a gem excelled in value by ho precious stone except diamond, and regarded as a Va r et y of corlintlum (q.v.), highly transparent and brilliant. It is•some times colorless, and the colorless kind, called white sapphire, is sometimes sold as dia mond. It more frequently exhibits exquisite color, generally a bright red or a beautiful blue; more rarely gray, white, or green. The red variety is the oriental ruby (q.v.) of hipidaries; the blue is that commonly called sapphire, and which has received this ancient times. It is found crystallized, usually in six-sided prisms, terminated by tix-sided pyramids; and is sometimes found imbedded in gneiss; but it more frequently occurs in alluvial soils. It occurs at Biliu in Bohemia, and Expailly in Auvergne, but more abundantly in some parts of the east. Ceylon is famous both for its rubies and its ;sapphires, the latter being the more almndant. They occur with garnets and other
'minerals, iu a stratum of water-worn pebbles firmly imbedded in clay, in which there are occasional lumps of granite and gneiss. But nothing has yet been done to seek for them in their original situation in the mountain rocks. A piece of sapphire, which was dug out of the alluvium within a few mires of Ratnapoora in 1853, was valued at upward of £4.000. The sapphire was one of the stones in the breastplate of the Jewish hil:11 priest. Among the Greeks it was sacred to Jupiter.—The name girasol sapphire is given to a beautiful variety with a pinkish or bluish opalescence, and a peculiar play of light. The dattoyant sapphire has more pearly reflections. The asteria sapphire has in the midst of it a star of six bright rays, resulting from its crystalline structure.