KATHLEEN. My goodness! (Takes up the stone again, very delicately; and drops it. General consternation.) L. Never mind, Katie, you might drop it from the top of the house, and do it no harm. But though you really are a very good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possibly be, remember, you have your faults, like other people, and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything energetically, I would assert it by "my badness," not "my goodness." KATHLEEN. Ah, now, it's too bad of you! L. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my "too-badness." But you may as well pick up the ruby, now you have dropped it; and look carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines which gleam on its surface, and here is a pretty white sapphire (essentially the same stone as the ruby), in which you will see the same lovely structure, like the threads of the finest white cobweb. I do not know what is the exact method of a ruby's construction, but you see by these lines, what fine construction there is, even in this hardest of stones (after the diamond), which usually appears as a massive lump or knot. There is therefore no real mineralogical distinction between needle crystals and knotted crystals, but, practically, crystallized masses throw themselves into one of the three groups we have been examining to-day; and appear either as Needles, as Folia, or as Knots; when they are in needles (or fibers), they make the stones or rocks formed out of them "FIBROUS;" when they are in folia, they make them "FOLIATED;" when they are in knots (or grains), "GRANULAR." Fibrous rocks are comparatively rare, in mass; but fibrous minerals are innumerable; and it is often a question which really no one but a young lady could possibly settle, whether one should call the fibers composing them "threads" or "needles." Here is amianthus, for instance, which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton thread you ever sewed with; and here is sulphide of bismuth, with sharper points and brighter luster than your finest needles have; and fastened in white webs of quartz more delicate than your finest lace; and here is sulphide of antimony, which looks like mere purple wool, but it is all of purple needle crystals; and here is red oxide of copper (you must not breathe on it as you look, or you may blow some of the films of it off the stone), which is simply a woven tissue of scarlet silk. However, these finer thread-forms are comparatively rare, while the bolder and needle- like crystals occur constantly; so that, I believe, "Needle- crystal" is the best word (the grand one is, "Acicular crystal," but Sibyl will tell you it is all the same, only less easily understood; and therefore more scientific). Then the Leaf- crystals, as I said, form an immense mass of foliated rocks; and the Granular crystals, which are of many kinds, form essentially granular, or granitic and porphyritic rocks; and it is always a point of more interest to me (and I think will ultimately be to