gems, beryl, emerald, Brazil, Colombia, China, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Zambia, Madagascar, Mozambique, inclusions

Sinkankas: Very handsome, imaginatively designed book, with the unusual feature of the title being spread over three pages. Apparently this work was meant to be the first of a series of monographs on gemstone families but up to date (1988) no others have appeared. The first part treats emerald history, in the East, as known to Pliny, origin of the name, curious lore surrounding, famous emeralds, and the color and causes. The second part describes world emerald deposits with most space naturally devoted to the Colombian mines, type crystals, and a discussion of trapiche crystals. The third part provides property data, considerable detail on inclusions in emerald, doublets & imitations, and the methods of gemological investigation . Next appear four tables of constants of natural & synthetic emeralds, comparisons of emerald to other similarly-colored stones or imitations, and fluorescence of emeralds from various deposits. The bibliography, unfortunately, is replete with errors in contrast to the text which is relatively free of defects. The mostly high quality illustrations show natural specimens, minerals that could be mistaken for emerald, cut stones, a Russian postage stamp depicting Siberian emerald, jewelry set with emeralds, absorption spectra, and many photographs of inclusions but these last lack the quality of the other illustrations. Rev R K Mitchell, J Gemm, 11, 7, 1969, 272–3, notes errors in biblio & elsewhere.