Lapidist

This specimen offered fine material for the lapidist, but its lack of symmetry and absence of terminations lessened its scientific value. ❋ North Carolina. Board Of Agriculture. (1896)

Many of these crystals are of great scientific interest because of the remarkable terminations, oftentimes rivalling the lapidist in the number and brilliancy of the facets presented. ❋ North Carolina. Board Of Agriculture. (1896)

The doublet was rent asunder by imperial decree, as when a lapidist melts the mastic that holds in deception adamant and glass, while real diamond stands all fire short of the hydro-oxygen flame. ❋ William Elliot Griffis (1885)

If we examine crystals carefully we find, not only that nature has here provided geometric forms of marvelous beauty and exactness, with faces of polish and quoins of acuteness equal to the work of the most skillful lapidist, "but that in whatever manner or under whatever circumstances a crystal may have been formed, whether in the laboratory of the chemist or the workshop of nature, in the bodies of animals or the tissues of plants, up in the sky or in the depths of the earth, whether so rapidly that we may literally see its growth, or by the slow aggregation of its molecules during perhaps thousands of years, we always find that the arrangement of the faces is subject to fixed and definite laws." ❋ Various (N/A)