more often in clay soils. The finest sapphires are found in Ceylon; Kashmir and Burma also produce beautiful specimens; and sapphires are found in the United States (particularly in Montana) and in Victoria and New South Wales. The value depends on quality rather than size and does not increase with the size, as does that of the ruby. A sapphire of 165 carats was sold in 1867 for $40,000, In early times a dark-hued or indigo sapphire was called a male sapphire, a pale blue one a female sapphire,
Sappho (săf′ō̇), one of the great poets of the world, was born on the island of Lesbos in Greece. She was only six when she lost her father, and must have lived about the end of the 7th century B. C., as she flourished at the same time as Alcæus and Stesichorus. But little is known of her life, except that she had a daughter and was acquainted with Alcæus. It is said that she fled from Mitylene to Sicily for refuge about 596, but a few years later came back to Mitylene, where she was the center of a group of girls with a passion for poetry. But two of her odes, one to Aphrodite, with a number of short fragments have survived the wear and tear of centuries, but they are enough to assure her genius. For sincerity, deep feeling, passion and exquisite grace her lyrics stand alone. There is a story that she fell in love with a beautiful youth, and, because he did not return her love, plunged from a precipice, called the Leucadian rock, into the sea.
Saprophytes (săp′rō̇-fītz), plants which are not able to make their own food and do not attack living plants or animals, but obtain their food from decaying bodies or organic products. These plants are not able to make their own food, because they do not contain chlorophyll. They attack dead bodies or body products, and sooner or later all organic matter is attacked and decomposed by them. Were it not for them it is said that “the whole surface of the earth would be covered with a thick deposit of the animal and plant remains of the past thousands of years.” Saprophytes are mostly fungi, but some of the higher plants also adopt this method of obtaining food. See Fungi.
Sap-Suck′er, a name loosely applied to several small black and white woodpeckers and to the white-bellied nuthatch. The only true sap-sucker is the yellow-bellied woodpecker, a permanent resident in some parts of the United States and a winter resident in other parts. These birds perforate the bark to the sapwood, and have done extensive damage to orchards and shade-trees in the west. But they also render service in that they are great insect-eaters; destroying countless numbers of ants, wasps, beetles, bugs and grasshoppers and eating more flies than any other woodpecker. The bird is about one fifth smaller than the robin; its upper part is black, white and yellowish; breast black and the rest of the under-part pale yellow; throat and crown a bright red. It is a boisterous member of the woodpecker family, its note gay and rollicking, its woodpecking tattoo a spirited performance. Both the male and the female work in making the nest, excavating a deep hole, where five or seven white eggs are well-concealed. Both birds share in hatching.
Sap′wood′. As the trunks of trees increase in diameter each year, new layers of wood are laid down. The ascending sap moves through the newer wood, gradually abandoning the older. This newer wood, therefore, is known as sapwood, in distinction from the abandoned wood, known as the heart-wood (q. v.).
Saracen Architecture. There are no examples of purely Arabic architecture, except a few indistinct ruins of cities and streets excavated out of rocks. The Arabs were wanderers, not artists, and so, whether they built at home or in the countries they invaded, Persian and Byzantine workmen were the usual builders secured by the caliphs or rulers. Omar the second caliph (644 A. D.) introduced the minaret, a slender tower from which a priest should call the people to prayer. All of the Arab tribes in Asia, as well as the Moors of North Africa and Spain, are classed under the term Saracen, and it is to this race that Europeans owe some of their best designs used in architecture and the practical arts. Interesting examples of Saracenic architecture are in Cairo, Damascus, Cordova, Seville and Granada. The Saracens are lovers of geometry. Their Mohammedan Bible, the Koran, is written in Cufic, the most beautiful script known. Therefore the artists invented a type of design known as arabesque, which is a combination of scrolls, lines and twists, with which they stamped the upper portion of their plaster-walls, mingled with texts from the Koran. This, combined with a stalactite or hanging ceiling, made a beautiful and refined decoration. The lower portions were faced with richly colored tiles dipped in a glaze (coat of glass), an art learned from the Persians, who taught soft pottery. Wonderful tiles in blues and greens, with copper glaze, may be seen on the tomb of Mahomet (A. D. 707) the great mosque at Cordova (A. D. 756) and the Moorish buildings of Granada. There, also, one may examine a vase about four feet high, of graceful proportions, which is decorated with arabesque and covered with a brilliant gold glaze. This ware is known as Hispano-Moresque. The finest example that is perfect is owned in Sicily. The Saracens introduced tapestry or carpet-weaving into Spain about the 12th century and later
