The Hindoos took great pleasure in carving images of their idols, and in making grotesque forms as well as talismans, from the precious stones found in their country; and very many examples are shown to the traveller. The sapphire was often chosen for this purpose; and neither its excessive hardness nor its high price offered any serious obstacles to the determined votary or the superstitious grandee. There is a statuette of Buddha, one inch in height, carved by the Hindoos out of a perfect sapphire, in the British Museum, which came from the sack of India. One of the richest reliquaries of any age or any country is the golden case at Kandy in Ceylon, which contains a tooth of Buddha, but which the naturalists declare to be the tooth of a monkey. Never was fancied sanctity so dearly enshrined. The dental specimen is enclosed in five golden cases fitting each other _en suite_ and incrusted with the finest rubies, sapphires, and other gems Ceylon and India has afforded. Philostratus describes a chamber in the ancient Royal Palace of the Parthians at Babylon as follows: “It has a roof fashioned into a vault like the heaven, composed entirely of sapphires, which are the bluest of stones, and resemble the sky in color. This is the chamber in which the King delivers his judgment.” The Asiatics, in all periods of their semi-civilized history, made a lavish use of this gem in the decorations of their dwellings and their temples. Even the partial ruins of some of these edifices still to be seen in various parts of India, exhibit great beauty in their impaired mosaics of precious stones. The red sapphire is known in commerce as the Oriental ruby, and when in perfection is the most magnificent of gems, and is rarely approached in the beauty of its gorgeous hue by any other gem. The term ruby is an indefinite one, and refers to any stone of a rich red color. All these gems were classed together in the time of Pliny, under the generic name of “carbunculus,” but the red sapphire was reckoned a variety, and especially referred to under the name of “lychnis.” It is seldom found exceeding three karats in weight, and the distinguished mineralogist, Beudant, declares that a perfect red sapphire of thirty troy grains is unknown, and would be of inestimable value. It is a singular fact that while the blue variety should occur in masses and crystals of even several ounces in weight, the red is rare even at four karats. Modern mineralogists now maintain that all of the large historic rubies are spinels, but it is within the bounds of possibility that large red sapphires do occur sometimes as exceptions to an apparently rigid rule; for we have lately received from the Ceylon mines a transparent crystal of pink color which weighs two hundred and forty-one karats. It is also stated that the King of Arrakan possesses two magnificent prisms of one and a half inches in length and an inch in diameter.