Because of its great value, the ruby has often been used as a term of comparison for human worth, implying the highest excellence. The Scottish poet William Dunbar used it in pious thought: “Hail, redolent ruby, rich and radious! Hail, Mother of God!” Among precious rubies, greatly desired is the star ruby, a gem so flawed that it catches the light as a sun with six out-shooting rays. “The sun is fair,” said the poet Drummond of Hawthorne on a fine summer’s morning, “when he with crimson crown and flaming rubies leaves his eastern bed.” The star ruby, with its three crossbars making six rays of light, has been thought by these lines of light to signify Faith, Hope, Charity, Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Thus it is doubly prized, for its good fortune and for its beauty. The deep rubies of “pigeon’s blood” or ox-blood red come from Burma; those from Siam may be purplish brown; from Ceylon, more probably pink; a Brazilian ruby, a topaz; a Siberian ruby, a tourmaline; and a Balas ruby, a spinel. Most frequent of all comparisons with gems are references to the “ruby lips” of beauty. Close after these come allusions to the rich red of wine, as when Fitzgerald tells us, in his translation of the _Rubaiyat_ of Omar Khayyam: But still a ruby kindles in the vine, And many a garden by the water blows. Robert Herrick, the poet of youth and springtime, who advises us to enjoy lovely things while they are here—“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”—in a note of more solemn warning says to a fair maid: That ruby which you wear Sunk from the tip of your soft ear Will last to be a precious stone When all your world of beauty’s gone. What the maiden answered is not on record, but it is sadly pleasant to think, three hundred years later, that somewhere today that ruby is still beautiful and still enjoyed. _Sapphire_ Sapphire is the current form of a Sanskrit word meaning dear to Saturn, an olden god whose reign was regarded as the golden age. The stone has been known since earliest times, although what the ancients called sapphire was probably the lapis lazuli, our sapphire being called by them the hyacinth. It is hard to tell, however, just what gem is intended when in the _Song of Songs_ the Queen of Sheba sings of Solomon, her beloved: “His hands are as gold rings set with beryl; his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.” Our sapphire is a bluish transparent variety of native crystalline aluminum oxide, the same corundum that when it is red we call a ruby. The sapphire may be sky blue or cornflower blue, and shade through the lighter hues to an almost colorless stone, called white or water sapphire.