Cinnamon Stone is a variety of garnet, belonging to the lime-alumina type, known also as essonite or hessonite, from the Greek hēssōn, inferior, in allusion to its being less hard and less dense than most other garnet. The Garnet group of minerals show crystals with a habit of rhombic dodecahedrons and trapezohedrons. ...

It has a characteristic red color, inclining to orange, much like that of hyacinth or jacinth. Indeed it was shown many years ago, by Sir A. H. Church, that many gems, especially engraved stenes, commonly regarded as hyacinth, were really cinnamon-stone. The difference is readily detected by the specific gravity, that of hessonite being 3.64 to 3.69, whilst that of hyacinth (zircon) is about 4.6. Hessonite is rather a soft stone, its hardness being about that of quartz or 7, whilst the hardness of most garnet reaches 75. Cinnamon-stone comes chiefly from Ceylon, where it is found generally as pebbles, though its occurrence in its native matrix is not unknown. The name Hyacinth can refer to: the Hyacinth from Greek mythology. ... Jacinth is a red transparent variety of zircon used as a gemstone. ... For the spy satellite of this codename see Zircon (satellite). ... Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earths crust. ...

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...