SAPPHIRE

(Gr. a-oupu^o;.) A very hard gem, consisting e entially of crystallized alumina. It is of various colours; the blue variety being generally called the sapphire, the red the oriental ruby, the yellow the oriental topaz. SAPROPHAG ANS, Saprophaga. (Gr. fottreoe, decomposing matter, and (fcfycu, J eat.) The name of a tribe of Coleopterous insects, comprising those which.feed on animal and vegetable substances in a state of decomposition. SAPWOOD, is the external part of the wood of Exogens, which, from being the latest formed, is not filled up with solid matter, or with the colouring principles which are deposited in wood after a certain time. For these reasons, sapwood is that through which the ascending fluids of plants move most freely; and not being solidified by the earthy and other substances eventually incorporated with wood, is quickly decomposed when exposed to the action of air and moisture. Hence for all j building purposes the sapwood is, or ought to be, removed from timber. The sapwood or unsolidified wood of all \ trees is much the same in its power of resisting decomj position, that of the oak and lignum vitae perishing as I quickly as poplar and other valuele timber; and chemists! have ascertained that if the hardest heartwood is reduced to its original condition of sapwood by the abstraction of; the matter of solidification, all those properties which give heartwood its value are destroyed. [s. 1093]