to the other edge. It is in these joinings
that M. Joffriand has made the most marked
improvements. Before the establishment of
the manufactory at St. Petersburgh, all
malachite veneering had straight edges to the
separate pieces, and very little attention was
paid to the veins or markings; but the
curved joinings now afford many facilities
for producing elegance and symmetry in
marking.

The fixing of these numberless little pieces
upon the ground-work which is to support
them is not so difficult an art as those which
precede it; but still it requires great care and
attention. This ground-work or substratum
may be stone or marble; but it is generally
iron or copper. The malachite is cemented
down piece by piece, each in its proper position.
Small interstices are left here and
there, which are afterwards filled up with
green breccia—plaster coloured with
powdered malachite, and speckled with minute
fragments. When the whole is filled up,
the surface is ground with sand, to bring
it to a proper level; and after this it is
polished.

Those who remember (and few will forget)
the gorgeous malachite productions in the
Russian department at the Crystal Palace
will be able to form some faint conception
of the difficulties entailed in their execution.
Every pound of malachite becomes reduced
by weight to half a pound by the time it
has reached the form of veneer, and
further reduced to a quarter of a pound by
the waste unavoidable in adjusting and
fitting. The veneered surface thus assumes
a value of about three guineas a pound;
and as there are at least two pounds and a
half to the square foot, this gives a value
of seven or eight guineas for a square foot
of malachite veneer, for material alone,
irrespective of the value of the labour bestowed
upon it.

Some of the churches in St. Petersburgh
are said to have fluted columns of malachite,
which present an exquisitely beautiful
appearance; but nothing ever seen out of
Russia has ever equalled the wonderful
productions which were sent over to us in
eighteen hundred and fifty-one. There were
transmissions of this remarkable material
from a few other quarters. Thus, a Derbyshire
firm, accustomed to works in gems and
stones, prepared marble slabs with a surface
of malachite; and a South Australian firm
showed that the celebrated Burra Burra
copper mines are capable of yielding fine
malachite; and a Prussian firm exhibited a
beautiful silver casket with four tablets of
malachite; and some of the mining companies
of Russia exhibited masses of the substance
just as they had been obtained from their
rocky bed. But all these sank into
insignificance before the gorgeous productions of
the Messrs. Demidoff. Who can forget the
chimney-piece, and the round, and oval, and
square tables, and the chairs, and the tazza,
and the vases, and the pedestals, and the
clock, and above all, who can forget the
doors? These doors, suitable for the folding-
doors of a grand saloon, and measuring
together about fourteen feet in height, by
seven in width, were made of metal, covered
with malachite veneer about a quarter of an
inch in thickness—much thicker than is
ordinarily used. The cement with which
the veneer was fastened to the metal was
made with fragments of the malachite itself,
so as to correspond with it in colour. It was
stated by the Messrs. Demidoff that those
two doors employed thirty men upwards
of a year to fit, finish, and polish the
malachite veneer! One almost feels inclined to
ask whether, after all, they were worth so
much labour; but this is a delicate politico-
economico-aesthetico-social question,
which must not hastily be answered. The
malachite productions altogether were valued
at the large sum of eighteen thousand
guineas.

Such is this illustrious Russian stranger—
malachite. When the name was scarcely
known in England, there was another
analogous substance well known to our
iewellers and wearers of jewels—turquoise. It
is curious to trace the points of resemblance
between them. Both occur in small portions
mostly rounded, imbedded in other rocks.
Both owe their colour to copper. Both can
with care be cut, and both receive an exquisite
polish. The chief difference is, that while the
one presents various tints of rich green, the
other has a delicate blue or greenish blue
colour. As the malachite admirers have,
almost to this day, been much in doubt
whether malachite ought to be considered a
stone; so was turquoise for many years a
mystery; it being a matter for speculation not
only what it is, but whence it comes. Some
persons thought that turquoise is a sort of
fossil ivory tinged with copper; while others
stoutly maintained its claim to the rank of a
true mineral. There appear, indeed, to be
different kinds of turquoise, owing their blue
colour more or less to the presence of a little
copper; and it is supposed that some of the
specimens which contain phosphoric acid are
bones or teeth of animals, mineralised by the
effects of a turquoise solution. Be this as it
may, the Turks and Persians are amazingly
fond of turquoise; they wear it as a gem in
diadems and bracelets; they employ it as an
adornment for the hilts of swords and the
handles of knives; and they value it as an
amulet or talisman. It is near Nishapore, in
Persia, that the true turquoise is chiefly
found. It is generally attached in small
pieces to porphyritic rock, at some depth
below the surface of the ground; but
sometimes it seems to have bubbled out from the
rock in the form of little beads or pimples:
while, at other times, the blue turquoise matter
pervades the fissures of the rock in the form of