JADE, a name commonly applied to certain ornamental stones, mostly of a green colour, belonging to at least two distinct species, one termed nephrite and the other jadeite. Whilst the term jade is popularly used in this sense, it is now usually restricted by mineralogists to nephrite. The word jade[1] is derived (through Fr. _le jade_ for _l'ejade_) from Span. _ijada_ (Lat. _ilia_), the loins, this mineral having been known to the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru under the name of _piedra de ijada_ or _yjada_ (colic stone). The reputed value of the stone in renal diseases is also suggested by the term nephrite (so named by A. G. Werner from Gr. [Greek: nephros], kidney), and by its old name _lapis nephriticus_. Jade, in its wide and popular sense, has always been highly prized by the Chinese, who not only believe in its medicinal value but regard it as the symbol of virtue. It is known, with other ornamental stones, under the name of _yu_ or _yu-chi_ (yu-stone). According to Professor H. A. Giles, it occupies in China the highest place as a jewel, and is revered as "the quintessence of heaven and earth." Notwithstanding its toughness or tenacity, due to a dense fibrous structure, it is wrought into complicated forms and elaborately carved. On many prehistoric sites in Europe, as in the Swiss lake-dwellings, celts and other carved objects both in nephrite and in jadeite have not infrequently been found; and as no kind of jade had until recent years been discovered _in situ_ in any European locality it was held, especially by Professor L. H. Fischer, of Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden, that either the raw material or the worked objects must have been brought by some of the early inhabitants from a jade locality probably in the East, or were obtained by barter, thus suggesting a very early trade-route to the Orient. Exceptional interest, therefore, attached to the discovery of jade in Europe, nephrite having been found in Silesia, and jadeite or a similar rock in the Alps, whilst pebbles of jade have been obtained from many localities in Austria and north Germany, in the latter case probably derived from Sweden. It is, therefore, no longer necessary to assign the old jade implements to an exotic origin. Dr A. B. Meyer, of Dresden, always maintained that the European jade objects were indigenous, and his views have become generally accepted. Now that the mineral characters of jade are better understood, and its identification less uncertain, it may possibly be found with altered peridotites, or with amphibolites, among the old crystalline schists of many localities.