DIFFERENCES IN REFRACTION DUE TO CRYSTAL FORM. The difference in behavior toward light of the singly and doubly refracting minerals depends upon the crystal structure of the mineral. All gems whose crystals belong in the cubic system are singly refracting in all directions: In the case of some other systems of crystals the material may be singly refracting in one or in two directions, but doubly refracting in other directions. No attention need be paid to these complications, however, when using the sunlight-card method with a cut stone, for in such a case the light in its course within the stone will have crossed the material in two or more directions, and the separation and consequent doubling of image will be sure to result. For those who wish to study double refraction more in detail, Chapter VI., pages 40-52, of G. F. Herbert-Smith's _Gem-Stones_ will serve admirably as a text. As an alternative any text-book on physics will answer. LESSON IV ABSORPTION AND DICHROISM CAUSE OF COLOR IN MINERALS. In Lesson III. we saw that many gem materials cause light that enters them to divide and take two paths within the material. Now all transparent materials _absorb_ light more or less; that is, they stop part of it, perhaps converting it into heat, and less light emerges than entered the stone. If light of all the rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet) is equally absorbed, so that there is the same relative amount of each in the light that comes out as in the light that went into a stone, we say that the stone is a _white_ stone; that is, it is not a _colored_ stone. If, however, only blue light succeeds in getting through, the rest of the white light that entered being absorbed within, we say that we have a blue stone. Similarly, the _color_ of any transparent material depends upon its relative degree of absorption of each of the colors in white light. That color which emerges most successfully gives its name to the color of the stone. Thus a ruby is red because red light succeeds in passing through the material much better than light of any other color. UNEQUAL ABSORPTION CAUSES DICHROISM. All that has been said so far applies equally well to both singly and doubly refracting materials, but in the latter sort it is frequently the case, in those directions in which light always divides, that the absorption is not equal in the two beams of light (one is called the ordinary ray and the other the extraordinary ray). For example, in the case of a crystal of ruby, if white light starts to _cross_ the crystal, it not only divides into an ordinary ray and an extraordinary ray, but the absorption is different in the two cases, and the two rays emerge of different shades of red. With most rubies one ray emerges purplish red, the other yellowish red.