Fine crystals of staurolite have been found in Patrick County, Virginia, and there is said to be a beautiful local legend in regard to their origin. Near where they are found there wells up a spring of limpid water, and the story goes that one day, long, long ago, when the fairies were dancing and playing around this spring, an elfin messenger winged his way through the air and alighted among them. He bore to them the sad tidings of the crucifixion of Christ in a far-off city. So mournful was his recital of the sufferings of the Saviour that the fairies burst into tears, and these fairy tear-drops, as they fell to earth, crystallized into the form of the cross. These natural crosses are in great demand as charms, and ex-President Roosevelt is said to wear one of them mounted as a watch-charm. There has been found in the southern part of New Mexico, and in northern Mexico, a blue variety of calamine, a hydrous silicate of zinc, colored blue by an admixture of copper. This stone has been cut into gem form and has been sold to a certain extent as a cheap gem. It is translucent and is sometimes veined with white wavy lines. The Mexican Indians employed in the mines often set up a cross and a candle near where they are working, so that they may pay their devotions at this improvised shrine. In Sonora and Western Chihuahua the Indians frequently place a piece of the stone to which we have alluded alongside the cross. They may be attracted by its beautiful blue color, or they may believe that it is a turquoise, although it does not resemble this latter stone, which is more opaque, of a different shade of blue and of a different composition. In some epitaphs the hope of the resurrection finds expression in likening the body enclosed in its narrow coffin to a precious jewel in its casket. The following lines from a tombstone erected in 1655 to the memory of Mary Courtney, at Fowell, Cornwall, England, give a good example of this class of inscription:[406] Near this a rare jewell’s set, Clos’d up in a cabinet. Let no sacrilegious hand Breake through—’tis y^e strickte comaund Of the jeweller: who hath sayd (And ’tis fit he be obey’d) I’ll require it safe and sound Both above and under ground. In a churchyard at Prittlewell, Essex, England, a rather whimsical treatment of the same idea is offered by some verses engraved on the stone marking the graves of two wives of a certain Freeborne, the first of whom died in 1641 and the second in 1658. The bereaved husband seems to have been perfectly willing to await the Day of Judgment for the return of his lost spouses:[407]