Book Details + Condition: J.B. Lippincott Company (Philadelphia). First Edition, 1913. Hardcover with beautifully decorated blue boards; white and gilt to upper board and spine. A luxurious first edition, with 90 heavy, high-quality paper and crisp, bright plates. 422 pages. Includes Kunz's signed inscription on the front endpaper to "Berthold Laufer, Curator of Archeology, Field Museum Chicago". Laufer was a very well published anthropologist and geographer. Scarce. A detailed volume by American mineralogist George Frederick Kunz on the folklore and magical attributes of gems, amulets, charms, and qualities of stones. Contents include: Magic Stone and Electric Gems; Stones of Healing; On Meteorites, or Celestial Stones; Snake Stones and Bezoars; Amulets: Ancient, Medieval and Oriental, and much more. A clean and firm copy of a beautiful and fascinating work, with tight binding; lightly rubbed extremities; some buckling to cloth covering of spine (with a bit of wear to spine ends); interior is clean and free of markings, save the author's inscription of front endpaper.
