Rock-crystal has been used extensively in the past year with ornaments of ribbon-like or plaque-like effects. Sometimes all the parts are made into the exact shape of a bowknot, with a bordering of platinum and diamonds, or of platinum and diamonds with a calibre-cut onyx; that is, the rock-crystal material is cut into minute square or oblong stones, which are run into double triangular edges that hold them. The crystals are dulled, and frequently have the appearance of moonstones. At times, indeed, moonstones are used in their place. Sometimes these panels, or bits and pieces of rock-crystal, are drilled, diamonds set in platinum are inserted into the drill-holes, and the ornament is engraved in classic designs of Watteau-like effects. The origin of Burmese rubies is thus explained in a Burmese legend current in the region of the Ruby Mines. According to this legend, in the first century of our era three eggs were laid by a female _naga_, or serpent; out of the first was born Pyusawti, a king of Pagan; out of the second came an Emperor of China, and out of the third were emitted the rubies of the Ruby Mines.[702] Dealing in precious stones was by no means an unusual occupation in Europe more than four hundred years ago, as is shown by the fact that a certain Peter, one of the secret agents of Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne of England in Henry VIII’s reign, was called in the secret correspondence of the conspirators, “The Merchant of the Ruby.” Such dealers frequently travelled from place to place, and usually offered their wares to princes and nobles; hence the statement in a letter that the Merchant of the Ruby “was not able to sell his wares in Flaunders” might not seem suspicious if the letter were intercepted and read, although the meaning was that the emissary had been unable to obtain succor in Flanders for the cause of the pretender.[703] Probably this designation also contained a covert allusion to the Red Rose of York, for Perkin Warbeck gave himself out to be Richard, Duke of York. A sixteenth-century traveller, the Portuguese Duarte Barbosa, after saying that “the rubies grow in India,” proceeds to state that those of finest quality and greatest value were for the most part gathered in a river called Pegu and were named _nir puce_ by the Malabars. As a test of their fineness, the Hindus would touch them with the tip of the tongue, the coldest (densest) being the best. When a superior ruby was thus picked out, the examiner would attach a little wax to its finest point, and so pick it up and look through it against a bright light; by this means any blemish would immediately become apparent. These rubies came not only from the river of Pegu but from other parts of the land of the same name, often being discovered in deep mountain clefts. However, they were not cut and polished in that country, but were merely cleaned and sent for cutting to “Palecote and the country of Narsynga.”[704]