Theophrastus's History of Stones/History of Stones
ΘΕΟΦΡΑΣΤΟΥ
ΤΟΥ ΕΡΕΣΙΟΥ
ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ
ΛΙΘΩΝ
ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ.
THEOPHRASTUS's
HISTORY
OF
STONES.
I.OF Things formed in the Ground, some have their Origin from Water, others from Earth.
II. [2]Water is the Basis of Metals; as Silver, Gold, and the rest: Earth of Stones; as well the more precious, as the common: and of the various Earths of peculiar Kinds, whether remarkable for Colour, Smoothness, Density, or whatever other Quality.
III. The Metals have been considered in another Work: the Stones and Earths of various Kinds, therefore, are to be the Subject of this Treatise.
IV. All these we are (plainly speaking) to judge formed by the Concretion of Matter pure and equal in its constituent Parts; which has been brought together in that State by mere Affiux; or by means of some Kind of Percolation; or separated, as before observed, from the impurer Matter it was once among, in some other Manner; For perhaps it is effected in some Cases by one; and in others by other of these Means[3].
V. From the Differences of the constituent Matter; and of the Manner of its Coalescence, the Concrete assumes its various Qualities, as Smoothness, Density, Brightness, Transparency, and the like; and according as it is more pure and equal, the more does it partake, of these.
VI. Qn the whole, the more perfectly the Concretion has been formed, and the more equal in its constituent Parts the concreting Matter was, the more does the Concrete possess the peculiar Properties which are owing to that Equality.
VII. [4]The Concretion is, in some of these Substances, owing to Heat; and in others to Cold. There is perhaps nothing to hinder but that the Coalescence of some Kinds of Stones may be occasioned by the one, and of others by the other of these Causes: though that of the Earths of all Kinds seems owing only to Heat. From these contrary Causes, however, may happen the Concretion, or Dissipation of contrary Substances.
VIII. There are in Stones of different Kinds many peculiar Qualities, which arise from this, that there are many very great Differences both in the Matter and Manner of the Affluxes of the terrestrial Particles from which they were formed; of which those in regard to Colour, Tenacity, Smoothness, Density, and the like Accidents, are frequent; though those in other more remarkable Properties, are not so common[5].
IX. These Qualities Stones have, therefore, from the common Differences of the Matter, and Manner of the Affluxes of their constituent Parts: But besides these, they have others[6] which arise from the more peculiar Powers of their concreted Masses: Such are their acting upon other Bodies; or being subject, or not subject to be acted upon by them. Thus some are fusible, others will never liquify in the Fire; some may be calcined, others are incombustible; and in others, other such particular Properties are observable. To this it may be added, that in the Action of the Fire on them, they also shew many Differences.
X. [7]Some are said to have a Power of making Water appear of their own Colour, as the Emerald. Others of petrifying, or converting wholly into Stone, whatever is put into Vessels made of them. Others have an attractive Quality; and others serve for the Trial of Metals, as that called the Heraclian, or Lydian Stone.
XI. The greatest, however, and most wonderful of all the Qualities of Stones is that (if the Accounts of it are true) of those which bring forth young[8].
XII. But the most known and general Properties of Stones are their several Fitnesses for the various Kinds of Work. Some of them are proper for engraving on; others may be shaped by the Turner's Tools; others may be cut or sawed: Some also there are which no Iron Instruments will touch; and others which are very difficultly, or scarce at all to be cut by them[9].
XIII. There are also, besides these, many other Differences observable in them, according to their several Qualities; of which those in regard to Colour, Hardness, Softness, Smoothness, and the like Accidents, because of the Number and Diversity of those Qualities, happen to many[10].
XIV. And to some indeed through whole Countries; from which Quarries of them have obtained their Names; as the Parian, the Pentelican, the Chian, and the Theban[11].
XV. In Ægypt, about Thebes, there is also found the Alabaster, which is dug in large Masses; and the Chernites, which resembles Ivory, and in which, it is said, Darius was buried; as also the Porus, which in Colour and Hardness emulates the Parian Marble, though singular in its remarkable Lightness: in this it resembles the Tophus: and on Account of this the Ægyptians generally used it in the Partitions of their more elegant Edifices.
XVI. There is also found in the same Place a transparent Stone, something like the Chian: and in others, there are many other Kinds.
XVII. These are the Differences which have been mentioned as common to many Stones. But those which arise from the particular. Powers[12] before named, are less frequent; nor do they, like these, happen. to whole Strata, or vast Masses. Some of the Stones, in which they take Place, are very scarce and small, as the Emerald, the Carnelian, the Carbuncle, the Sapphire; and, in general, all that are cut as Gems: and some of them are found in dividing other Stones.
XVIII. Some few of these Stones there are, which are subject to the Force of Fire, and may be burnt. These shall be first treated of, in Consideration of what their Differences are.
XIX. In regard to the Action of Fire on them, some are fusible, and melt by it; as the metalline Kinds. For the Stones, which partake of the Nature of Metals, as Silver, Copper, or Iron,[13] melt in the Furnaces with them; either by means of the Humidity of the metalline Matter of which they partake; or of their own Nature: and in this Manner the Pyritæ also, and those Kinds of them called the Molares, melt with the Matter they. are laid upon in burning.
XX. Some absolutely affirm, that all Stones will melt in the Fire except Marble, which by burning is reduced to Lime: But this is saying absolutely, and of all, what ought only to be said in general, and of the greater Number.
XXI. For some burst[14] and fly in Pieces in the Fire: as, though not fusible, yet not of Power wholly to resist the Force of the Heat; which is also the Case in earthen Vessels, This is an Effect no way repugnant to Reason; for these are absolutely dry, whereas whatever is fusible must be, at least in some Degree, moist; and retain, to the Time of its Fusion, more or less of its Humidity.
XXII. It is said also, that on exposing to the Sun's Rays some are wholly dried up; so as to be rendered useless, unless macerated and impregnated again with Moisture: while others by the same means become softer and more brittle. It is evident that the Humidity is extracted in both these Cases; the Difference is, that the more dense and compact Stones harden by this drying; whereas the looser, and those of a less firm Texture, become more brittle and soft by it.
XXIII. Some of the more brittle Stones there also are, which become as it were burning Coals, when put into a Fire, and continue so a long time: of this Kind are those about Bena, found in Mines, and washed down by the Torrents, for they will take fire on throwing burning Coals on them, and continue burning so long as any one blows them; afterwards they will deaden, and may after that be made to burn again: they are therefore of long Continuance, but their Smell is troublesome and disagreeable[15].
XXIV. That also which is called the Spinus, is found in Mines. This Stone cut in Pieces and thrown together in a Heap, exposed to the Sun, burns: and that the more, if it be moistened or sprinkled with Water[16].
XXV. [17]But the Lipara Stone empties itself as it were in burning; and becomes like the Pumice: changing at once both its Colour and Density; for before burning it is black, smooth, and compact. This Stone is found in the Pumices, separately, in different Places, and as it were in Cells, no where continuous with the Matter of them. It is said, that in Melos the Pumice is produced in this Manner in some other Stone, as this is on the contrary in it. But the Stone in which the Pumice is found, is not at all like the Lipara Stone, which is found in it.
XXVI. Certain Stones there are about Tetras[18] in Sicily, which is over against Lipara, which empty themselves in the same Manner in the Fire.
XXVII. And in the Promontory called Erineas, there is a great Quantity of Stone like that found about Bena; which, when burnt, emits a bituminous Smell, and leaves a Matter resembling calcined Earth.
XXVIII. Those fossile Substances that are called Coals, and are broken for Use, are earthy, they kindle however, and burn like wood Coals. These are found in Liguria, where there also is Amber, and in Elis, in the Way to Olympias over the Mountains. These are used by the Smiths[19].
XXIX. There[20] is also found in the Mines of Scaptesylæ a Stone, in its external Appearance something resembling rotten Wood; on which, if Oil be poured, it burns; but when the Oil is burnt away, the burning of the Stone ceases, as if it were in itself not liable to such Accidents.
XXX. These then are the Differences of the Stones which are subject to the Force of Fire.
XXXI. But there is another Kind of Stone, formed, as it were, of contrary Principles, and entirely incombustible[21]: This is called the [22]Carbuncle, on which they engrave Seals. Its colour is red, and of such a Kind, that when held against the [23]Sun, it resembles that of a burning Coal. This Stone is extremely valuable, one of a very small Size being valued at forty Aurei. It is brought from Carthage and Massilia.
XXXII. There is also an incombustible Stone found about Miletum[24], which is of an angular Shape, and sometimes regularly hexangular; they call this also a Carbuncle from its not being injured by the Fire; but that is strange, for the Diamond[25] might as properly be for that Reason called by the same Name, as it also possesses that Quality.
XXXIII. The Power these Stones have of resisting the Force of Fire; is not from the same Cause with that of the Pumices, or of Ashes[26]. They seem not to burn, because they absolutely and originally contain no Moisture; whereas those Substances do not kindle nor burn in the Fire, because their Humidity has been already evaporated.
XXXIV. Some are of opinion, that the[27] Pumices have been entirely made what they are by burning; that Kind excepted which they esteem formed by the Concretion of the Froth of the Sea; This Opinion, as to the Sea kind, they take from the apparent Testimony of their Senses.
XXXV. As also the other, in regard to those formed in the [28]Mouths, and different Openings of the burning Mountains, through which the Flames have made their way: and those made by burning the Lapis[29] Arabicus, a Stone, which when it has passed the Fire assumes the Form of the Pumice. The Places, indeed, in which Ptimices are produced, seem to testify the Manner of their Formation; for they are principally found about the Craters of the burning Mountains. On the whole, some Kinds of them, perhaps, may be formed by the Action of Fire on Stones of a proper Texture, and others in some other Manner: for there are in Nature many different Ways of Production[30].
XXXVI. The Pumices in the Island of [31]Nisuros seem an Instance of this, for they appear to have been formed by a slight Coalescence only of an arenaceous Matter: What is esteemed a Proof of this is, that some of the Pumices found there crumble in the handling into a kind of Sand, as if they never had been thoroughly concreted or bound into a Mass.
XXXVII. These are found in Heaps, many of them at least as big as can be grasped in a Man’s Hand, and sometimes larger than that, when the superficial Part is taken off.
XXXVIII. All the Pumices of the Island of Melos are also light and [32]sandy; and some Kinds there are which are produced, as was before observed, in other Stones.
XXXIX. The different Sorts also vary from one another in Colour, Compactness, and Gravity.
XL. As to their Colour, there is a black Kind found on the Sicilian Shores, which is compact and weighty, and something resembles that kind of the Pyrites called the Molaris: for there is a natural Pumice of this Texture, heavy and compact; and this is of more Value and more useful than many of the others; this Kind from the Shores is a better Abstergent than the light white Kind: But the most abstergent of all others, is that from the Sea itself.
XLI. Hitherto has the Pumice been treated of: Hereafter are to be considered the Natures and Causes of the Diversity of the other several Kinds of combustible and incombustible Stones; from the History of which this Digression has been made.
XLII. There are, beside what has been already named, among the Stones which are cut as Gems, other Differences, in regard to their several peculiar Qualities.
XLIII. Some of which are in the external Appearance only. Of this Kind are those of the [33]Carnelian, the [34]Jasper, and the [35]Sapphire; which last is spotted, as it were with Gold.
XLIV. [36]The Emerald has also its peculiar Properties; for it assimilates Water, as was before observed, to its own Colour. A Stone of a middling Size will do this to a small Quantity only of the Water into which it is put, a large one to the Whole; but a bad one to no more than a little of it, which lies just about it. It is also good for the Eyes; for which Reason People carry about them Seals engraved on it, that they may have them to look on. It is, however, a scarce Stone; and but small: unless we are to give Credit to the Commentaries of the Egyptian Kings, in which it is recorded, that there was once sent as a Present from a King of Babylon an Emerald [37]four Cubits in length, and three in breadth: And that there was in their Temple of Jupiter, an Obelisk composed of four Emeralds, which was forty Cubits long, and in some Places four, and in others two Cubits wide. These Accounts we have from their Writings.
XLV. But of those which are commonly called the [38]Tani, the largest any where known is in Tyre; for there is at that Place a very large Pillar of this Stone in the Temple of Hercules. But perhaps this is no true Emerald, but of the Pseudo-Smaragdus, or bastard Kind; for there is such a Stone of this Class.
XLVI. [39]The common bastard Emeralds are produced in Places known and well frequented; especially in two; the Copper Mines of [40]Cyprus, and an Island over against Carthage. In this Island the true Emerald is also sometimes found. These are dug out of the Earth as the other; and in Cyprus there are many Veins of them together; few, however, are found there big enough for Seals to be engraved on: the small ones are very numerous, insomuch that they use them for soldering of Gold; which Purpose they serve in the manner of Chrysocolla. Some have imagined them, indeed, to be of the Chrysocolla Kind, and in Colour they certainly are very like.
XLVII. [41]The Chrysocolla is found in great Quantity in Gold Mines; and even much more plentifully in those of Copper, and the Places near them.
XLVIII. The true Emerald is, as before observed, a scarce Stone; it seems to be [42]produced from the Jasper, for it is said there has been found in Cyprus a Stone, the one half of which was Emerald and the other Jasper, as not yet changed.
XLIX. There is some Workmanship required to bring the Emerald to its Lustre, for originally it is not so bright.
L. It is, however, excellent in its Virtues, as is also the Lapis[43] Lyncurius, which is likewise used for engraving Seals on, and is of a very solid Texture, as Stones are; it has also an attractive Power, like that of Amber, and is said to attract not only Straws and small pieces of Sticks, but even Copper and Iron, if they are beaten into thin Pieces. This Diocles affirms.
LI. The Lapis Lyncurius is pellucid, and of a fire Colour: And those Stones which are produced from the Animal in its native Wildness, are better than those from the tame; as also those from the Male, than those from the Female: As the different nourishment the Creature eats, and the different Exercise it uses, as well as the Difference of its whole Habit of Body, in being either dryer or moister, make great Differences in the Stones.
LII. They are found, in digging, by People who are skilful; though the Creature, when it has voided its Urine, hides it, and heaps the Earth together about it. The polishing these Stones is also a Work of great Trouble.
LIII. [44]Amber also is a Stone: It is dug out of the Earth in Liguria, and has, as the before mentioned, a Power of Attraction: But the greatest and most evident attractive Quality is in that Stone which attracts [45]Iron. But that is a scarce stone, and found in but few Places: It ought, however, to be ranked with these Stones, as it possesses a like Quality.
LIV. There are, beside these, many other Gems used for the engraving Seals: As the [46]Hyaloides, which reflects the Images of Things, and is pellucid; the Carbuncle, and the [47]Omphax; as alfo [48]Crystal, and the [49]Amethyst; both which are, in like manner, pellucid,
LV. These, as also the Carnelian, are sometimes found in the dividing other Stones.
LVI. Other Differences there also are, as was before observed, in Gems of the same Name: As in Carnelians, that Species which is pellucid and of a brighter red, is called the [50]Female; and that which is pellucid and of a deeper red, with some Tendency to Blackness, the Male. The Lapis Lyncurius is distinguished in like manner, the Female of which is more transparent, and of a paler yellow; and the [51]Lapis Cyanus is in the same manner divided into Male and Female; the Male is in this also of the deeper Colour.
LVII. There is also the [52]Onyx, variegated with white and brown placed alternately; and the Amethyst, which resembles Red-wine in Colour.
LVIII. The [53]Agate also is an elegant Stone; it has its Name from the River Achate in Sicily; and is sold at a great Price.
LIX. There was also once found in the Gold Mines of [54]Lampsacus, an admirably beautiful Gem, on which, after it had been sent to Tyre, a Seal was engraved, which for its Excellence was presented to the King.
LX. These are very beautiful, and very scarce: But those produced in Greece, are of the meanest and worst Kind.
LXI. Such are also the Carbuncles of Orchomenus in [55]Arcadia, which are darker coloured than the Chian; but are, however, used for making Mirrors; and the Trœzenian[56], which are variegated with purple and white: The Corinthian is also of this Kind; it is variegated with the same Colours, but is whiter and paler. And finally, there are many others of this Sort.
LXII. But the most perfect and valuable Carbuncles are scarce, and had only from a few Places[57], as Carthage and Massilia, from Ægypt, about the Cataracts of the Nile, and the Neighbourhood of Syene, a City of the Elephantines, and from the Country called Psebos.
LXIII. In Cyprus also are found the Emerald and the Jasper[58]; but what are used for setting in Cups and other Vessels of Gold, they have from Bactriana, toward the Desart: They go thither on Horseback to search for them, at the Time. of the blowing of the Etesian or annual Easterly Winds; for they are seen at that Time, as the Sands are violently tossed about by the Winds: What they find there, however, are but small.
LXIV. Of the Number of the Precious Stones is that also which is called the [59]Pearl. It is not of a pellucid Nature, but Bracelets, and other Ornaments of great Value are made of it. It is produced in a kind of Oyster, and, in like manner, in the Pinna marina; and is found in the Indies, and on the Shores of certain Islands in the Red Sea.
LXV. These are of peculiar Excellence and Value. And there are yet also some others to be mentioned; as the fossile[60] Ivory, which is variegated with white and a dark Colour; and the [61]Sapphire, which is of a dark Dye, and not very different from the Male Cyanus; as also the [62]Prasius, which is of an æruginous Colour.
LXVI. And the [63]Hæmatites, or Blood-stone, which is of a dense, solid Texture, dry, or, according to its Name, seeming as if form'd of concreted Blood: There is also another Kind of it, called Xanthus, which is not of the Colour of the former, but of a yellowish White, which Colour the Dorians call Xanthus.
LXVII. To these may be added[64] Coral, for its Substance is like that of Stones: Its Colour is red, and its Shape cylindrical, in some sort resembling a Root. It grows in the Sea.
LXVIII. The[65] petrified Calamus Indicus also, is not very different from this. But these are more properly the Subjects of a different set of Observations.
LXIX. Besides these there are also many Kinds of metalline Stones, some of which contain both [66] Gold and Silver, though the Silver alone is visible; and these are very remarkable, both for their Weight and Smell.
LXX. As also the native Blue, or [67] Lapis Armenus, which has in it Chrysocolla; and another Stone, in Colour resembling the [68]Carbuncle, but much heavier.
LXXI. Upon the whole, there are many and very remarkable, different Kinds of fossile Substances dug in Pits; some of which consist of an argillaceous Matter, as [69]Ochre, and Reddle; others of a sandy, as Chrysocolla and the Lapis Armenus; and others as it were of Ashes, as [70]Sandarach, Orpiment, and others of that Kind.
LXXII. Many other Properties there also are in these Substances which are easily observed. As that some of the Stones before named are of so firm a Texture, that they are not subject to Injuries, and are not to be cut by Instruments of Iron, but only by other Stones[71].
LXXIII. On the whole, there is a great Difference in the Texture of the larger Stones; as may be learnt from the different Manners in which they may be worked; some may be cut, others engraved on, and shaped, as before observed, by the Turner's Instruments, as the [72]Magnet Gem, a Stone of very elegant Appearance, and much admired by many: This carries a fine Resemblance of Silver, though it is in Reality a Stone of an entirely different Kind.
LXXIV. Many also there are, which admit all Kinds of working; as in [73] Siphnus there is a fossile Subsance of this Kind, which is dug in Lumps, and roundish Masses, at about three Furlongs Distance from the Sea: This may at first be either engraved on, or worked by the Turner into any Form, by reason of its Softness; but when it is afterwards burnt and wetted with Oil, it becomes black and solid. Vessels of different Kinds, for the Service of the Table, are made of this.
LXXV. All Substances of this Kind are to be worked on by Iron Instruments; but others there are, which, as before observed, will not be touched by them, but must be cut by other Stones; and others yet, which may be cut with Iron, but the Instruments must be dull and blunt[74]: Which is much as if they were not cut by Iron.
LXXVI. Iron, however, being harder in its Texture than Stone, will cut such as are both harder and more solid than these.
LXXVII. There seems, however, yet an Absurdity in this, since the Whetstone has Power upon, and takes off a Part of the Iron Instruments which are sharpened on it, and the Instrument may be made to cut and work upon the Whetstone; but notwithstanding, will not cut those Gems which are work'd into Seals; tho' the Stone with which they are worked is composed of the same Kind of Matter with the Whetstone, or something not very unlike it. These Stones are from Armenia[75].
LXXVIII. The Nature of the Stone which tries [76]Gold, is also very wonderful, as it seems to have the same Power with Fire; which is also a Test of that Metal. Some People have, for this Reason, questioned the Truth of this Power in the Stone; but their Doubts are ill founded, for this Trial is not of the same Nature, or made in the same Manner with the other. The Trial by Fire is by the Colour, and Quantity lost by it; but that by the Stone, is made only by rubbing the Metal on it; the Stone seeming to have a Power of receiving separately the distinct Particles of different Metals.
LXXIX. It is said also, that there is a much better Kind of this Stone now found out, than that which was formerly used; insomuch, that it now serves not only for the Trial of the refined Gold, but also of Copper or Silver coloured with Gold; and shews how much of the adulterating Matter by Weight is mixed with Gold: This has Signs which it yields from the smallest Weight of the adulterating Matter, which is a Grain, from thence a Colybus, and thence a Quadrans or Semi-Obolus; by which it is easy to distinguish if, and in what Degree, that Metal is adulterated.
LXXX. All these Stones are found in the River [77]Tmolus; their Texture is smooth, and like that of Pebbles; their Figure broad, not round; and their Bigness twice that of the common larger Sort of Pebbles. In their Use in the Trial of Metals, there is a Difference in Power between their upper Surface, which has lain toward the Sun, and their under, which has been to the Earth, the upper performing its Office the more nicely; and this is consonant to Reason, as the upper Part is the dryer; for the Humidity of the other Surface hinders its receiving so well the Particles of the Metals: For the same Reason also it does not perform its Office so well in hot Weather as in colder, for in the hot it emits a Kind of Humidity out of its Substance, which runs all over it: This hinders the metalline Particles from adhering perfectly, and makes Mistakes in the Trials. This Exsudation of a humid Matter is also common to many other Stones; among others, to those of which Statues are made; and this has been looked on as peculiar to the Statue.
LXXXI. These then, in general, are the Differences, and particular Qualities of Stones.
LXXXII. Those of Earths are fewer, indeed, but they are also more peculiar.
LXXXIII. [78]Earth is subject to be liquated, altered from its original State and Consistence, and afterwards indurated again, It will melt, as Stones, with fusible and fossile Substances; and is softened, and made into Bricks: These are of various Kinds, and composed in various Manners, but are all made by moistening and burning.
LXXXIV. [79]But if Glass be made, as as some affirm, of the Uelitis, a vitrifiable Sand, it owes its Production to the extreme Force of Fire: The best is that, in the making of which Flints have also been used; for besides that they melt and mix with the running Mass, they have a peculiar Excellence in the making the Glass, insomuch that they give the Differences in the Clearness of the Colour.
LXXXV. There is in Cilicia[80] a kind of Earth, which by boiling becomes tough and viscous; with which they cover the Vines instead of Birdlime, to preserve them from the Worms.
LXXXVI. It may also be proper to mention here the Earths which are naturally endued with a Quality of petrifying Substances immersed in them; since those which yield peculiar and different [81]Juices, have unquestionably some fixed and peculiar Properties, and are distinct Kinds; as are also those which supply Nourishment to Plants[82].
LXXXVII. Nor ought those to be less considered which are singular and remarkable in their Colours, and for that Reason used by Painters.
LXXXVIII. The Production of these, as was observed in the Beginning of this Treatise, is from the mere Afflux or Percolation of their constituent Particles,
LXXXIX. Some of these seem burnt, and to have suffered Changes by means of Fire, as [83]Sandarach, Orpiment, and others of that Kind; all of them, however, plainly speaking, owe their present Form to the Exhalation of their more humid Parts; and these, in particular, seem to have been dried, and, as it were, smoaked, They are found in Mines of Gold and Silver, and some in those of Copper also.
XC. Of this kind are [84]Orpiment, Sandarach, Chrysocolla, [85]Reddle, Ochre, and the Lapis Armenus; but this last is scarce, and found only in small Quantities; whereas there are sometimes whole Veins of the others. Ochre is said to be found generally heaped together; and Reddle scattered, as it were, every way. Painters use this Reddle in their Pictures, as also Ochre, instead of Orpiment; for when powdered they scarce at all differ in Colour, however different they appear in the Mass.
XCI. There are also in some Places peculiar Pits of Reddle and Ochre, as in Cappadocia, from whence they are taken in vast Quantities: But in these Pits, it is said, the Labourers are in Danger of Suffocation; which unhappy Accident sometimes comes on very suddenly.
XCII. The best Reddle, for there are many Kinds, is thought to be that of Cea, and particularly that which is taken from the Reddle Pits; for it is also sometimes found in [86]Iron Mines.
XCIII. There are beside these also, the [87]Lemnian Reddle, and the Sinopic, as it is commonly called; but it is dug in Cappadocia, and thence carried to Sinope. There are particular Pits in Lemnos, in which nothing but the Earth is dug.
XCIV. There are three kinds of the [88]Sinopic; of a deep Red, another of a whitish Colour, and the other of a middle Colour between the other two, which is called the pure simple Kind, because it is used without mixing, whereas they mix the others.
XCV. There is also a kind of this made of Ochre, by burning, but it is not nearly so good as the others. The making this was an Invention of Cydias, who took the Hint of it, as is said, from observing, in a House which was on fire, that some Ochre which was there, when half burnt, assumed a red Colour.
XCVI. The way of making the factitious is this: They put the Ochre into new earthen Vessels, which they cover with Clay and set in Furnaces; and these, as they grow hot, heat also the Ochre, and the greater Degree of Fire they give, the deeper and more strongly purple the Matter becomes. The Origin of the native Kinds seems to testify that this Method is not irrational, for all these seem to have suffered Changes by the Action of Fire: From whence we may rationally conclude, that this way of making the factitious, is either of the same kind, or at least very analogous to that used by Nature for the Production of the genuine[89].
XCVII. The Reddle also is of two Kinds, the native, and the factitious[90].
XCVIII. There is also, beside the native Lapis Armenus, a factitious Kind made in Egypt. There are, indeed, three different Sorts of this; the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Cyprian[91]; of which the Egyptian is the best for clear strong Paintings, and the Scythian for the fainter. The Egyptian is factitious; and the Historians, who write the Annals of the Kings of that Nation; think it a thing worthy a Place in their Histories, which King of Egypt was the Inventor of the artificial Cæruleum in Imitation of the native.
XCIX. Presents are also made to great Persons, in some Places, of this Substance, as well that which has passed the Fire as that which has not; and the Phœnicians pay their Tribute in it.
C. [92]People who prepare Colours say also, that the Lapis Armenus of itself makes four different ones; the two extremes of which are, first, that which consists only of its finest Particles, and is very pale; and the other, that which consists of its largest, and is extremely deep.
CI. But these are the Works of Art, as is also Ceruse[93], to make which, Lead is placed in earthen Vessels over sharp Vinegar, and after it has acquired some Thickness of a kind of Rust, which it commonly does in about ten Days, they open the Vessels, and scrape it off, as it were, in a kind of Foulness; they then place the Lead over the Vinegar again, repeating over and over the {{ls}ame Method of scraping it, till it is wholly dissolved; what has been scraped off they then beat to Powder, and boil for a long Time; and what at last subsides to the Bottom of the Vessel is the Ceruse.
CII. In a Manner also, something resembling this, is Verdigrise made; for Copper is placed over the Lees of Wine, and the Rust which it acquires by this means is taken off for Use: And it is by this means that the Rust which appears is produced[94].
CIII. There are also two kinds of Cinnabar, the one native, the other factitious[95]; the native, which is found in Spain, is hard and stony; as is also that brought from Colchis, which they say is produced there in Rocks and on Precipices, from which they get it down with Darts and Arrows. The factitious is from the Country a little above Ephesus; it is but in small Quantities, and is had only from one Place. It is only a Sand, shining like Scarlet, which they collect, and rub to a very fine Powder, in Vessels of Stone only; and afterwards wash in other Vessels of Brass, or sometimes of Wood: What subsides they go to work on again, rubbing it and washing it as before. And in this Work there is much Art to be used; for from an equal Quantity of the Sand some will make a large Quantity of the Powder, and others very little, or none at all. The Washing they use is very light and superficial, and they wet it every time separately and carefully. That which at last subsides is the Cinnabar, and that which swims above in much larger Quantity is only the superfluous Matter of the Washing.
CIV. It is said, that one Callias, an Athenian, who belonged to the Silver Mines, invented and taught the making this artificial Cinnabar. He had carefully got together a great Quantity of this Sand, imagining, from its shining Appearance, that it contained Gold: But when he had found that it did not, and had had an Opportunity, in his Trials, of admiring the Beauty of its Colour, he invented and brought into use this Preparation of it. And this is no old Thing, the Invention being only of about ninety Years Date; Praxibulus being at this Time in the Government of Athens.
CV. From these Accounts it is manifest, that Art imitates Nature, and sometimes produces very peculiar Things; some of which are for Use, others for Amusement only, as those employed in the ornamenting Edifices; and others, both for Amusement and Use. Such is the Production of Quicksilver[96], which has its Uses: This is obtained from native Cinnabar, rubbed with Vinegar in a brass Mortar with a brass Pestle. And many other Things of this kind others, perhaps, may hit upon.
CVI. There yet remain also of the fossile Kingdom certain remarkable Earths, dug out of Pits, the Formation[97] of which, as was observed in the beginning of this Treatise (owing either to the mere Afflux or Percolation of their constituent Parts) is from a more pure and equal Matter than the other more common Kinds. And these receive their various Colours from the Differences as well of their Properties of acting on other Bodies[98], as of their being subject to be acted on by them. Some of these they soften, and others melt, and afterwards reduce to Powder; and from these compose the stony Masses which we receive from Asia.
CVII. But the native, which have their Use as well as Excellence, are only three or four; the [99]Melian, the [100]Cimolian, the Samian, and the Tymphaican, called Gypsum.
CVIII. Of these the Painters use only the Melian; they meddle not with the [101]Samian, though it is very beautiful, because it is fat, dense, and unctuous; whereas such as are of a looser Texture, crumbling, dry, and without Fatness, are fitter for their Use; all which Properties the Melian, particularly that of Pharis, possesses. There are, however, beside these, in Melos and Samos both, many various kinds of Earths.
CIX. The Diggers in the Pits of Samos cannot stand upright [102]at their Work, but are forced to lie along, either on their Backs or on one Side; for the Vein of the Earth they dig runs length-way, and is only of the Depth of about two Foot, though much more in Breadth, and is inclosed in on every Side with Stones, from between which it is taken. There is also in the Mass of the Vein a distinct Stratum near the Middle, which is of better Earth than that without it; and within that there is sometimes another yet finer; and even beyond that a fourth: The farthest of these is that which is called the Aster.
CX. Earths of some kinds are also used about Cloaths, particularly the Cimolian. The Tymphaican is also used for the same Purposes; and the People of Tymphæa and the neighbouring Places call it [103]Gypsum.
CXI. Gypsum is produced in great Quantities in the Island of Cyprus[104], where it lies open, and easy to be discovered, and come at, the Workmen having but very little Earth to take away before they get it. In Phœnicia and [105]Syria also they have a Gypsum, which they make by burning certain Stones. They have a Gypsum in Thuria too, in great Plenty; as also about Tymphæa, and in the Country of the Perrhæbeans, and many other Places; but these are of a peculiar Kind, and are rather of a stony, than of an earthy Texture.
CXII. The Stone from which Gypsum is made, by burning, is like [106]Alabaster; it is not dug, however, in such large Masses, but in separate Lumps. Its Viscidity and Heat, when moistened, are very wonderful.
CXIII. They use this in Buildings, casing them with it, or putting it on any particular Place they would strengthen. They prepare it for Use, by reducing it to Powder, and then pouring Water on it, and stirring and mixing the Matter well together with wooden Instruments: For they cannot do this with the Hand because of the Heat. They prepare it in this Manner immediately before the Time of using it; for in a very little While after moistening, it dries and becomes hard, and not in a Condition to be used.
CXIV. This Cement is very strong, and often remains good, even after the Walls it is laid on crack and decay, and the Sand of the Stone they are built with moulders away; for it is often seen, that even after some Part of a Wall has separated itself from the rest, and is fallen down, other Parts of it shall yet hang together, and continue firm and in their Place, by means of the Strength of this Matter which they are covered with.
CXV. This Gypsum may also be taken off from Buildings, and by burning, again and again, be made fit for Use. It is used for the casing the Outsides of Edifices, principally in Cyprus and Phœnicia, but in Italy, for [107]whitening over the Walls, and other Kind of Ornaments within Houses. Some Kinds of it are also used by Painters in their Business; and by the Fullers, about Cloaths.
CXVI. It is also excellent, and superior to all other Things, for making Images; for which it is greatly used, and especially in Greece, because of its Pliableness and Smoothness.
CXVII. These Qualities of the Gypsum, therefore, fit it for these and such other Uses; for it seems naturally to have, as it were together, the Heat, and Tenacity of Lime, and the more viscous Earths. But it possesses both these Qualities in a much superior Degree to either of the others, which have them singly; for it acquires, on being moistened, a Heat much greater than that of Lime, and is much more tenacious than the most viscous of the Earths.
CXVIII. That its fiery Power is very great, is evident from this remarkable Instance: That a certain Ship which was laden with Cloaths, by some Accident letting in Water; the Cloaths being wetted by that Means, the Gypsum that was put among them took fire, and burnt both the Cloaths and the Ship.
CXIX. In Syria and Phœnicia they prepare a Gypsum by Fire; putting into proper Furnaces Stones, principally of the Marble, and other Kinds, which are of the most simple Texture, and heating them to a certain Degree; the harder Kinds they lay upon those which burn more readily; and when burnt, the Matter appears to be of extreme Strength, and fitted for enduring a long Time: After this they beat the Stones to Powder like Lime, to make them fit for Use.
CXX. From all this it seems evident, that the Properties and Nature of this Matter, are in a great Degree owing to the Fire[108].
- ↑ THIS excellent Author, notwithstanding that he has made the Title of the Treatise before us promise no more than an Account of Stones, we shall find hereafter, did not mean to confine himself in it, strictly and literally to discourse of only that Part of the fossile Kingdom. generally understood by this name: but to take into his Consideration, at the same Time, all those other mineral Substances which appeared to him to be formed of Matter of a like Kind with them; as the various Earths, &c. in short all those native Fossils, which, according to his Philosophy, had Earth, not Water, for the Basis of their Formation.
- ↑ Our Author's general System of the fossile World I shall not, in these Times of greater Knowledge, attempt to vindicate in all its Parts; but must do him the Justice to observe, that it was far from being either absurd, or improbable, at the Time when he wrote; when the Sciences, to which the present Age owes its Improvements in Natural Knowledge, were so little understood; and so few of the Experiments, which have now given Light into it, had been made; and that it carries at least, an equal Air of Probability, with many that have been since formed; and is absolutely more succinctly, clearly, and philosophically delivered than any of them all.
The Principles of mixed Bodies, as well those of the fossile, as of the vegetable and animal Kingdoms, are indeed so intimately united, and closely combined together, at their original Formation, that we are not to wonder, an Author, who wrote in such early Times, was not clearly acquainted with the exact Manner of their Composition: Those who have followed him, even after the Discoveries of many succeeding Ages, and with the Assistance of Chemistry, the best and sureft of all Means of judging, (and which, whatever some Men of fertile Imaginations may have thought, we have no sound Reason to believe was much known in his Time) have yet been of late found to have run into great Errors about them: and even those of the present and last Age, who have been able to discover the Mistakes of these, and have the Advantage of yet greater and farther Improvements in that Science, if they will speak frankly and ingenuously, must own, that though they have discovered the Errors of their Predecessors, and are certain they are nearer the real Knowledge of the Mysteries of Nature than those of any other Age have been, they yet are sensible, that they are only making farther and farther Advances toward what, perhaps, it is not in human Nature ever perfectly to complete.
Chemical Analysises, when judiciously and carefully made, are unquestionably the surest and best Methods we can use, towards the Attainment of that Knowledge; and yet, how imperfect our best Discoveries by these may appear to the industrions and ingenious of future Ages, may be guessed by the Errors we can discover in those of but a few before us.
When Chemistry became, some Time ago, better understood and more practised than it had probably ever been before, the Professors of it, finding a certain Number of different Substances, into which almost al] mixed Bodies were resolvible, immediately looked upon these as fixed and unalterable in themselves; and as they found them, in a Manner, in all mixed Bodies, they determined that they were the true Principles or Elements of which all Bodies were compounded; fixed their Number, and their Names, viz. That they were five, Spirit, Sulphur, Salt, Water, and Earth. Here then the whole Work seemed effected, the Secrets of Nature opened, and the true, fixed, and unalterable Principles of mixed Bodies clearly known.
But what Figure does this boasted Philosophy, this Set of Principles now make? when our own Experience, and the Discoveries of later Chemists give us even the unquestionable Testimony of our Senses, that no less than three of the five are so far from deserving the Name of Principles or Elements, that they are themselves mixed Bodies, and resolvible with proper Care into other distinct and different Substances. For the same Chemistry, which has brought Sulphur out of a mixed Body, will also separate that Sulphur into Salt, Water, and Earth; and when it has extracted from another, that Salt, they esteemed so true a Principle, will afterwards reduce it also into Water and Earth: Spirit also, we now find, is no other than Oil attenuated by Salts, and dissolved in Water. This appears by a plain and easy Experiment of Mr. Boyle's, viz. If Spirit of Wine be mixed with ten or twelve times it's Weight of Water, and set in a cool Place, the Salts will fly off, the Water will mix itself with the Water in the Mixture, and the Oil be left swimming at the Top.
Instead of the five Principles, therefore, of the Chemists before us, farther Discoveries have reduced us to a Necessity of owning only two, visible, obvious, and the Objects of our Senses: and even these two may perhaps hereafter be proved to be more nearly allied to each other than we at present imagine: these are Water and Earth; the very Principles, and the only ones acknowledged by this excellent Author, on whose Works I am offering my Remarks; and who, to his immortal Honour be it recorded, discovered that by Reason and Philosophy alone, of which we owe the Knowledge to a thousand tedious Experiments.
His System, though founded on this excellent Basis, I do not, as I before observed, attempt to justify: Observations, which it was impossible for him to make, have given us the Testimony of our Senses, that Metals do contain more or less of an absolute, genuine, and vitrifiable Earth; and Stones, it is as certain, are never wholly divested of that Water which once served to bring their constituent Parts together.
But to return to the Principles of mixed Bodies: Reason informs us, that these two, Water and Earth, alone can never have made all the Differences, and Virtues of them; we are compelled therefore to acknowledge a third, as obvious to our Reason as the others to our Senses; an active Something, to give that to the Mass, which Water and Earth alone could not: This unknown Principle is what some Chemists have called Acid, and the Metaphysicians Fire; Words which in their general and common Acceptation convey Ideas very different from those we mean to express by them on this Occasion, but in the Use of which we must be indulged, till a more perfect Knowledge of the Thing we mean to express has taught us to give it a more determinate Name.
- ↑ The Author has here justly, clearly, and succinctly given the general Manner, in which the constituent Matter of Earths and Stones has been brought together; and hinted at the various other Means by which it is done in other particular Cases.
The two general Ways he allows are by Afflux and Percolation: and nothing is more certain than that, by these two Methods, the two great Classes of the Bodies he is here to treat of, have been brought into a State of Formation; the Earths and Stones of Strata by Afflux: and the Crystals, Spars, and other Bodies of that Kind, by Percolation.
The Agent, in the first of these Cases, has been Gravity; and in the other, the continual passing of Water through the solid Strata.
When we look up to the original Formation of these Substances, we find the Particles, of which they were to be composed, in loose Atoms, diffused, and floating in that confused and irregular Mass of Matter (for that is evidently the Sense of the Word חהומ which we find translated the Deep) out of which this Earth was to be formed. The great Agent in gathering these scattered Atoms into a Mass, and separating them from the Water in which they were before floating, seems to have been what in the Mosaic Account of the Creation is called the Spirit of the Creator.
On the Action of this powerful Minister, the constituent Particles of Matter were collected into a Body, by their own Weight separated themselves from the Fluid in which they before swam; and subsided, some sooner, some later, in Proportion to their different Gravities,
By this Means the Particles of Stone, for Instance, precipitated themselves and formed a Stratum entire, homogene, and pure; before those of Clay began to subside: and these afterwards falling in a Mass on the Stratum of Stone already formed, constituted another of Clay over it: After all this, a Quantity of yet lighter Matter, settling on the Surface of this last formed Stratum, added to that another of what we call vegetable Mould, or something of like Kind. In this Manner were the different Strata of the Earth formed, and the Difference of the Matter, which was to subside in different Parts of the Globe, made that almost infinite Variety to be found in the Substance of the Strata.
This original Structure of the Earth, however, we are not now to expect to find: the universal Deluge has made many and wonderful Alterations in it, which are now every where obvious to our Senses, and are everlasting Records of that fatal Catastrophe, of which the Earth, in the Condition we now see it, is but the Ruin.
There are many and incontestable Proofs, that the Surface of the Globe, to a Depth beyond what we ever dig, was, in the Time of that fatal Calamity, dissolved and reduced nearly into the same Condition it was in at the Time of its original Formation: the stony, mineral, and even metalline, as well as earthy Matter: floating in the Waters that then covered it, in separate Particles. These, when the Tumult of that Immensity of Waters began to cease, were by the same Laws of Gravity again precipitated; and they subsided in Proportion to their different Weights; but this not in their original Purity, for the metalline and other heterogene Matter, nay and even extraneous Substances, the Shells of Sea Fishes, &c. if of about equal Gravity, subsided among the stony Matter amidst which they were before suspended, and made a Part of the Stratum that Precipitation formed: the lighter Matters, the Earths, Clays, &c. afterwards subsided into other Strata over these: and with them other extraneous Particles and Substances, of Gravities like theirs. Thus the present Surface of the Globe was formed, in Strata of different Kinds, and that again according to their different Gravities; except where the Motion of the Waters prevented this Regularity, by lodging sometimes on lighter Strata already formed, other whole Beds of weightier Matter, which its immense and irresistible Force had taken up, and now in its abating suffered to subside again.
This, allowing also for the Alterations made by Earthquakes, afterwards bursting, and elevating or sinking the Strata in many Places, is the present Condition of the outer Crust of this Earth to a certain Depth, far within which perhaps all our Researches lie; and in this Mass we find, according to the System of our Author, the Strata of Stone and Earth, formed by the Concretion of Matter, equal in Weight and many other of its Properties, and brought together in that State by mere Afflux, by means of the Action of Gravity: and in the perpendicular Fissures of those Strata, and some other Places, Crystals, Spars, and other like substances, separated by Percolation from the arenaceous, argillaceous, and other Matter, among which they subsided in their separated Particles; being there brought together by the continual draining of Water through the solid Strata; which in its Passage had taken them up with it, and there deserted them in different Manners; and left them to assume the Figures which are the natural and necessary Consequences of their Concretions.
These then are the two general Methods of Formation of those Bodies mentioned by our Author; the various others, which he hints at as taking Place in some particular Cases, are too numerous to be all recited here: Terrestrial and sparry Matter, washed from the Strata by the Water of Springs in their Passage, and subsiding at some Distance from their Source, round various Substances in Form of Incrustations, is one: Matter of a like Kind, and separated in a like Manner, dropping from the Tops of Caverns with the Water; and either deserted by it at the Top, and left in Form of Icicles or Stalactitæ; or at the Bottom, and left in Masses called Stalagmitæ, or Dropstones, is another very frequent one. Many others there also are; but the Bodies formed by these, as well as those, though not brought together by mere Percolation, or mere Afflux, are however, in general, of the Number of those formed of Particles originally brought together by the one or the other of these Means, and therefore very justly reducible under them as general Heads. What the Author adds of the various Stones and Earths, thus formed, owing their different Qualities to the Variety and Purity of the constituent Matter, and of the Manner of their Concretion, is plain, evident, and incontestable.
- ↑ The Author has here, in his accustomed clear and succinct Manner, given his Opinion in regard to the Causes of the Concretion of that Matter, the nature of which he had before described, for the Formation of the Bodies which are to be the Subject of the present Treatise.
The certain and immediate Cause of the Cohesion of these Particles, which had before, by their Gravity, been precipitated from among the fluid Matter in which they were at first suspended, was that universal Property in Matter called Attraction. The Pressure of the circumambient Atmosphere may serve to account for the Cohesion of large Masses of Matter: but the minute Contacts of lesser Particles of it, which sometimes cohere with a Force almost infinitely greater than the Pressure upon them can be supposed to influence, reduce us to a Necessity of having Recourse to this other Power of Attraction; a Property in all Matter, by which the Particles of Bodies draw. one another with a certain Force, which acts infinitely, more intensely at the Contact, or extremely near it, than at any determinate Distance.
How far the Heat, which is apparently manifest to our Senses at great Depths in the Earth; and is from thence, and from much greater Depths than we are ever likely to have Opportunities of being acquainted with, continually passing upwards to the Surface, may have been concerned in disspating the remaining Part of the Water, which had served to bring the Particles of Stones and Earths together; and, by that means, been instrumental to the bringing them into their present State; and how far the Cold about the Surface may have assisted in the Formation of others, by preventing the Dissipation or farther Rise of their constituent Particles, which had been washed from among the Matter of the Strata by the Water which continually also ascends from below towards the Surface, incessantly pervading them, and detaching and bearing up with it these Particles from among them, is a subject of too nice Enquiry, and too long to be particularly decided here. The bare mention of it may however serve to explain in what Manner Heat and Cold may be concerned in the reducing some of the fossile Substances into the State wherein we find them; and how Heat would have destroyed the very Means of Coalescence in those Subjects, to the Formation of which Cold has, according to this Philosophy, been essential; and Cold, on the contrary, must have prevented what Heat uninterrupted might have had Power of doing, in the others.
- ↑ The Author, having now treated of the constituent Matter of these fossile Substances, and the manner and Causes of its Coalescence, in order to their Formation, comes here to the Consideration of the Differences of the distinct Classes, Genera, and separate Species of them. These he very justly and philosophically deduces from the different Matter of which they are formed, and the various Elaborations it has passed in the Affluxes by which it has been brought together. The terrestrial Matter, which serves as the Basis of their Formation, he observes, is very commonly found differing in Colour, Density, &c. and hence the Stones formed of it have very frequently these Differences; which make the many various Species of the common Strata of them: but that there are also other Varieties in this coalescent Matter, in regard to more peculiar Qualities, which are more rarely found, but which, wherever they are, make Differences in the Body formed from them, of other and more remarkable Kinds: this he goes on to shew in their proper Places.
Some Editions of this Author have it πνοαὶ διαφοραὶ, and others πολλαὶ διαφοραὶ, in the last Line of this Sentence; the ῥοαὶ διαφοραὶ is a very rational and judicious Alteration of De Laet's, and in all Probability was the true original Reading.
- ↑ The common Differences of the more frequent and large Masses of Stone having been now accounted for, from the frequent Diversities of the Earths of which they were formed; which are found to differ, like them, in the common Accidents of Colour, &c. and even much more than they, in every Pit; the Author now proceeds to enumerate the Differences of a more remarkable Kind, observable in the more rare and valuable Species, and occasioned, according to his System, by Diversities of less frequent, and therefore more remarkable Qualities in the Matter from which they were formed: which, together with the more singular Operations of Nature, in separating and afterwards bringing that Matter into a Mass, have imparted to the formed Substance Qualities, or, as he chuses to express it by a Word of greater Signification, Powers more singular and observable than those occasioned by less essential and more common Varieties in both.
- ↑ After assigning the Causes of the various Figures and Qualities as well of the common, as the more rare and precious Kinds of Stones and Earths, the Author here enters into a Detail of what they are.
The Emerald is the Stone whose. Properties he begins with: but as he only hints in this Place, at what he more particularly explains himself upon some Pages after; I shall reserve what I have to offer, on this Subject, to that Part of the Work, where there will be a more immediate Opportunity of comparing it with his own Words.
The Stone he next mentions, and of which he has recorded the petrifying Power, but not the Name, is the Lapis Assius, or Sarcophagus. The Assian, or Flesh-consuming Stone. The Sarcophagus, Boet. 403. Asius vel Assius Lapis, Charlt. 251. Sarcophagus, sive Assius Lapis, De Laet. 133. Assius Lapis, Salmas. in Solin. 847. Plin. Book 36. Chap. 17.
This was a Stone much known, and used among the Greeks in their Sepultures, and by them called σαρμόφαγος from its Power of consuming the Flesh of Bodies buried in it; which it is said to have perfectly effected in forty Days. This Property it was much famed for, and all the ancient Naturalists mention it: But the other, of turning into Stone Things put into Vessels of it, has been recorded only by this Author and Mutianus, from whom Pliny has copied it; and from him some few only of the later Naturalists. The Account Mutianus gives of it is, that it converted into Stone the Shoes of Persons buried in it, as also the Utensils, which it was in some Places customary to bury with the Body; particularly those the Persons while living had most delighted in. The Utensils he mentions. are such as must have been made of many different Materials; whence it appears, that this Stone had a Power of consuming only Flesh; but that its petrifying Quality extended to Substances of very different Kinds. Whether it really possessed this last Quality, or not, has been much doubted; and many have been afraid, from its supposed Improbability, to record it. What has much encouraged a Disbelief of it is Mutianus's Account of its thus taking Place on Subjects of different Kinds and Textures: But this, in my Opinion, is no Objection at all, and the whole Account, very probably, true. Petrifactions, in those early Days, might not be distinguished from Incrustations of sparry or stony Matter; as even, with many People; they are not to this Day; the Incrustations of Spar on Moss and other Substances, in some Springs, being yet called by many petrified Moss, &c. and these might easily be formed upon Substances enclosed in Vessels, made of this Stone, by Water; if the Situation was in the Way of its passing through the Pores, dislodging from the common Matter of the Stone, and carrying with it sparry or other such Particles, and afterwards leaving them, in Form of Incrustations, on whatever it found in its Way. By this Means Things made of Substances of ever so different Natures and Textures, which happened to be enclosed, and in the Way of the Passage of the Water, would be equally incrusted with, and in Appearance turned to Stone; without regard to their different Configuration of Pores or Parts.
The Place where this Stone was dug was near Assos, a City in Lycia, from whence it had its Name; and Boetius informs us, that in that Country, and in some Parts of the East, there were also Stones of this Kind, which, if tied to the Bodies of living Persons, would, in the same Manner, consume their Flesh.
The Stones mentioned next, as having an attractive Power, are the Load-stone, &c. but as these and the Lapis Lydius are hereafter described more at large by the Author, I shall reserve to that Place what I have to add in regard to them.
- ↑ This is one of the many Passages for which this excellent Author has been censured by Persons who had never sufficiently studied, or, perhaps, even read him (as I hope to prove has been the general Case in the Accusations to which he has been subject) and this has been as much misunderstood and misrepresented as any one of them all.
Pliny has given a Handle to the Accusations of him, in this Place, by saying, that he and Mutianus believed there were Stones which brought forth young. Idem Theophrastus et Mutianus esse aliquos lapides qui pariant credunt. This has been a sufficient Source of Censures on the Author: most of those who quote, or mention him, never having given themselves the Trouble of learning any Thing more of him than what Pliny has told them; as this, and many other Passages, frequently quoted from him, to be hereafter considered, will abundantly prove: But, with Pliny's Leave, I must observe, that I find no Reason here to imagine, that Theophrastus ever believed any such Thing. He mentions it, on the contrary, as a Thing which he did not believe; but which, as it was generally reputed true, and a very remarkable Property of a Stone, he could not avoid mentioning in a Place where he was professedly writing on that Subject. He would not however let it pass, even though he did allow it a Place, without frankly expressing his own Suspicion that it was but an idle and groundless Story.
The Stone meant is the Ætites, or Eagle Stone; the Ætites Aquilinus. Linn. Ætites, seu Aquilinus Lapis, Worm. 77. Charlt. 31. Lapis Ætites, Boet. 375. De Laet. 114. Ætitæ, Gesn. de Lap. 10. famous for its imaginary Virtues in assisting in Delivery, preventing Abortions; and, which it at least equally possesses, of discovering Thieves. That the general Opinion was long what our Author records as reported of it, is easily proved: and we cannot wonder at that's being firmly believed, when we find such Virtues as the other, of choaking Thieves, &c. all certainly credited; and recorded by the gravest Authors.
That it was, long after, as well as before this Author's Time, believed to have this Property of bringing forth young, is evident from the Words prægnans, gravidus, Uterus, ἐγκύμων, &c. so constantly used in describing it. Pliny says of it, est autem lapis iste prægnans intus, quum quatias, alio velut in utero sonante. Dioscorides, ἀετίτης λίθος ὡς ἑτέρου ἐγκύμων λίθου ὑπάρχων. And numberless Instances might be brought of the earliest as well as later Authors using the like Exprssions; evidently testifying, that the Stone was, or had been generally believed to possess that so remarkable Quality; which perhaps this Author, who is accused of believing, was the very first who ever doubted.
In order to the establishing a more rational Account of the Nature and Formation of this Stone, it may not be amiss here to look into the Formation of Pebbles and Flints in general; of which Class this is a Species. By this Enquiry we shall find, that the Callimus, or included Stone, is, instead of a. young one, indeed the older of the two; and has had some Share in the Formation of its Parent, as the outer one was generally esteemed; though that has nothing to do with its Production.
The Flints and Pebbles, we now every where see, have been all formed in the Waters of the Deluge, by the mere Afflux of their constituent Matter. The first Concretion of this was generally in small Quantity, and formed a little Lump or Nodule; and this afterwards encreased in Bigness by the Application of fresh Matter, in different Quantities, and at different Times to it. If this new Matter happened to be of different Textures and Appearances, the separate Quantities, that at Times affixed themselves, became different Crusts of various Colours as may be observed frequently in our common Pebbles; if of the same Nature and Colour, and affixed nearly all at once, the Apposition became imperceptible afterward; and the Mass formed of the whole appeared a Flint, or Pebble, of regular and similar Substance: and if, lastly, this Matter, before its Application, had received other various-coloured Affluxes into it, they are seen in the Concrete, in irregular Lines and Striæ, and it becomes an Agate, or other such Stone. In all these Cases the Matter first formed into a Mass, yet remains in Form of a central Nucleus, in or near the Middle of the Stone, according to the equal or irregular Quantity of the'additional Matter which formed each Crust; this being sometimes all of the same Colour with that Nucleus, remains unperceivable, but sometimes, as before observed, being of different Colours, is evident to the Eye.
This Nucleus in some, indeed most of these Masses, being of the same Texture with the rest, has remained in its Place, and become a visible Spot of equal Hardness and Beauty with the rest of the Stone: in others, after the Application of some, or all the outer Crusts, it has shrunk into a smaller Compass, detached itself from the inner Crust, and become a loose, separate Stone, rolling about in the Cavity, now too large for it; and rattling in it when shaken. This is our Ætites; and the central Nucleus so detached, and shrunk, is its Callimus. In others, this central Nucleus has crumbled into loose, sandy, or earthy Matter, and remaining in that Form, loose in its Cavity, has made what is called the Geodes, or bastard Eagle Stone. The Geodes, and the Eagle Stone, so much renowned for Virtues, and so fabulously talked of as to their Origin, are therefore no other than common Pebbles, the central Nuclei of which have, from the different Nature and Texture of the Matter of which they were formed, detached themselves from the superadded Crusts, and either shrunk, on becoming more dry, into smaller Dimensions; or fallen into the original Grit, or sandy Matter, of which they were first composed.
- ↑ I cannot but observe from this, Passage of our Author, that, so early as in his Time, not only very many Species of precious Stones were in Use, and their different Degrees of Hardness familiarly known, but that the various Manners of working them were also well understood; even better than in the succeeding Ages, for he is here clear in the Distinction between the γλυπτοὶ and τορνευτοὶ, which much later Writers of his Nation are very justly accused of having confounded. The γλυπτὸν and τορνευτὸν of the Greeks, however confusedly misunderstood by some of them, and used as synonymous Terms by others, are really Words of distinct and determinate Sense; and signify the Cælatura and Tornatura of the Latins; which, I think, it is evident from this Passage, was well known to this Author, however it came to be forgotten afterwards.
- ↑ The Author, having now mentioned several very remarkable Properties in Stones, and their general Characters as to Difference of Texture, from the different Ways they are to be worked, proceeds here to relate the many other differences they have in their several peculiar Qualities, which they owe, as he has before established it, to the different Matter and Manner of the Affluxes of their constituent Parts: and such of theses as arise from the more common Varieties of terrestrial Matter, in Colour, &c. he again observes, are common to many and great Quantities.
This is only repeating, in its due Place, and at the Head of that Class of Stones to which it properly belongs, what he had before given as a Part of his general System: it was long, however, before this Passage was in a Condition to be thus understood; for after the Word ταύτας, there was by Defect in the Copy a Gap left, which some Editors had filled up with the Word διαφοραὶ only, but others, finding the Hiatus too large for that alone, have given their Opinion that the Word ἰδιότητας is also to be added. In that Manner I have written it, and it appears evidently to me to have filled up a Gap in the Sense, as well as in the Writing; by making the Beginning, as well as all the rest of the Sentence, clearly refer to what I have observed the Author to have said before, Page 20, and of which this is no more than a Recapitulation, in its proper Place.
- ↑ The Author here gives an Account of the various Kinds of Marble and Alabaster known in his Time; and even so early as that, we find the Parian familiarly known, and, as may very rationally be guessed from its being named before all the other Kinds, most esteemed of any. This was originally dug only in the Island of Paros, and the Strata of it were always found so cracked, that it was scarce ever to be had in Pieces of more than about five Feet long; so that the finest Blocks of it only juſt served for Statues of a natural Size: they were extremely valued for the Elegance of their Colour, and the excellent Polish they would take.
A Marble of this Kind, but perhaps not exactly the same with this of the Ancients, is now dug in many Parts of Italy; and much esteemed for the same Qualities.
The Pentelican, the Kind he next mentions, is now wholly unknown, and has been so for many Ages.
The Chian was a dead black Marble, so named from the Island of Chios, where it was dug; something of the Kind of the Lapis Obsidianus of Æthiopia, and, like it, in fome Degree transparent.
The Theban is a Marble well known to this Time; it is red, variegated with other Colours, and is of two Kinds: The one softer, and marked only with yellow; which is the Brocatello of the modern Italians; the other extremely hard and variegated with Black, White, and many other Colours: This is the Pyrrhopæcilus and Syenites of Pliny, and the Granate of the Moderns. Many of the Works of the Ancients in Greece, Italy, and elsewhere, are of this Marble.
The Alabaster is the Alabastrites, Boet. 490. De Laet. 166. Worm. 42. Matthiol. 1386. It is a well known Stone, white, and approaching to the Nature of Marble, but much softer. The Alabastrum and Alabastrites of Naturalists, though by some esteemed synonymous Terms, and by others confounded with one another, are different Substances; the Alabastrum is properly the soft Stone, of a gypseous Substance, burning easily into a Kind of Plaister; and the Alabastrites the hard, bearing a good Polish, and approaching to the Texture, of Marble. All the ;ater Authors confirm what Theophrastus here mentions, of its being found about Thebes. The Quarries of it there are not yet exhausted, and probably will not be in many Ages.
This Stone was by the Greeks called also sometimes Onyx, and by the Latins, Marmor Onychites, from its Use in making Boxes for preserving precious Ointments, which Boxes were commonly called Onyxes and Alabasters. Thus Dioscorides ἀλαζαςρίτες; ὁ καλέμενος ὄνυξ. And hence have been a thousand Mistakes in the later Authors of less reading; who have misunderstood Pliny, and confounded the Onyx Marble, as the Alabaster was frequently called, with the precious Stone of that Name. This Author, however, cannot be accused of having given any Occasion to the Confusion: for though the Onyx was, in his Time, sometimes called also Alabaster, as well as the Alabaster Onyx, from their common Use in these Boxes, he here clearly explains himself as to which Kind he is treating of, by observing, that it is that which is dug in large Masses; by way of Distinction from the Onyx or Alabaster Gem, as what we now call only the Onyx was then sometimes called.
The Chernites, or Chermites, was a white Marble, used in the Sepultures of the ancient Greeks, &c. and about which there have been many Mistakes among the later Authors: these, as the Species of Marble is now unknown among us, it would be but idle to enquire into.
The Porus was also a Marble much in Esteem with the Ancients, but unknown to us. Its peculiar Property, as our Author observes, was its Lightness. It cut well, and bore a tolerable Polish, and the Statues, &c. made of it, were common in Greece, and called Πώρινα, as those of the Parian Marble were called Πάρια. The Tophus, to which our Author compares this Marble for Lightness, is a rough Stone of the Pumice Kind, brittle, and eaſily crumbling into Powder. It is not much known in England, but common in Germany, where it is used instead of the Pumice, and called Topffstein and Tugstein. This was a Stone well known among the Greeks, and was what they called the Porus, without any Addition; whereas the other, here described among the Marbles by the Author, was called the Porian Marble; from its Resemblance to this Porus. The dark transparent Stone, next mentioned, was probably of the Obsidianus Kind; as well as the Chian. The Antients had two or three of these dark Marbles, of fine Texture, in great Use among them. They bore a good Polish, were transparent in some Degree when cut into thin Plates, and reflected the Images of Things as our Looking-glasses do: the finest Kind was, for this Reason, called ὀψιανὸς ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεος, which was afterwards written by the Latins, Opsianus, Opsidianus, and Obsidianus. And the true Origin of the Name being forgotten from the false spelling the Word, After-ages thought it had received it from one Obsidius, whom they imagined the first Finder of it.
- ↑ The Author, having now gone through the general Differences of the Strata of Stone, arising from common Causes; and having particularly mentioned, and in few Words described the various Species of Marble known in his Time, comes now to the Consideration of certain more extraordinary Qualities in Stones of smaller Size; arising from the Powers of more particular Combinations of Matter in their Formation. The particular Stones he mentions in this Place, as possessing these Powers, are hereafter treated of more at large. I shall therefore refer, what I have to observe in regard to them, to their proper Places, where they are separately described. To those particularly named the Author adds a great Number, which he also hereafter describes, in the Words τῶν εἰς τὰ σφραγίδια γλυπτῶν, which I have chosen to translate "that are cut as Gems," not as the literal Meaning of the Words might seem to imply, limiting what are added only to those on which Seals were engraven.
It is evident, the Author meant himself no such Limitation, since he has afterwards described, among the Stones of this Class, many which he expressly says were too small for this particular Use. The Reason of his using the Word in this Place is, that the Greeks had no particular Name for the pellucid Stones, which we call distinctly Gems; they called all Stones, whether large or smal], hard or soft, precious or common, by the general Name λίθος, and distinguished them, one from another, by their Epithets only, as διαφανὲς &c. and as the general Use of what we call Gems, and for which they had no particular Name, was the serving for Seals; they sometimes, instead of distinguishing them by particular or descriptive Epithets, called them Seal Stones, and hence the Word Seal Stone, σφραγὶς or σφραγιδίον became with them a common Word for what we call Gem; and in that Sense it is evidently used here by this Author.
Most of the Stones of this Class were found to be of so compact a Texture, as to resist the Force of Fire; at least of common Fires; and even of the strongest known in this Author's Time; the solar indeed, which we are able to throw on Bodies, by reflecting Burning-glasses, no Stone, not even the Diamond, in all Circumstances and Positions, can withstand: But as some Stones, which he had yet to treat of, were subject to great Changes, from the Action of Fire, such as was then commonly used on certain occasions, whether culinary, or for the melting of Metals; these he first chuses to describe, and proceeds to give their several Differences.
- ↑ The Author is here treating of the various Kinds of Spars; formed near the Veins of different Metals, and assuming their Colours from, and partaking of the Natures of the particular Metals in the Mines of which they are found. All these are formed by the Percolation and Afflux of their constituent Matter, which is taken up by the Water continually pervading the Strata; and in its Way separated from the grosser Particles among which it was at first reposited; and finally tinged with a Colour from, and in some Degree impregnated with the Virtues of the metalline Matter, among which it is deserted by the Water wherein it was before suspended; and left to coagulate, and assume the Form naturally arising from the Concretion of its Parts. Where these Spars are formed out of the Reach of metalline Matter, and have received, in their Paage through the Strata, no Impregnations from it, they are white: this is the natural Colour of their constituent Particles. But where they are formed in or about Mines, they, as our Author very justly remarks, partake of the Nature of, and, in some Degree, owe their Form and Mode of Existence to the particular Metal of the Mine. Their Shape and Virtues are often given them by the metalline Particles mixed with them in their Concretions; their Colours always; and that in a stronger or fainter Degree, as there has been more or less of that Matter mingled in their Masses[B 1].
If the metalline Particles are in the Mixture in any considerable Quantity; the whole assumes a Shape peculiar to the Metal to which they belong; if that be Lead, the sparry Concretions are cubic; if Iron, rhomboidal; and if Tin, they, shoot into the Form of quadralateral Pyramids. These are the Metals of which we can pretty certainly judge, from the Figure of the Spar about the Mine: as for the others, though they, influence the shooting of it in no less Degree, yet they do not always throw it into such determinate or regular Figures.
But if the metalline, Particles, assumed into the Spar at the Time of its Concretion, have a very great Power in determining it to a certain Figure; the Influence they have over it, in regard to Colour, is much greater; as all that it has of that is wholly owing to them: and as they are in greater or lesser Quantities: in it, they give it different Degrees, from the slightest Tinge to the deepest Colour.
What Metal has been concerned in effecting this Change of Colour, is not less easily and certainly discoverable from the Colour itself; than what has influenced the Shape, from the Form. If Lead has furnished the metalline Particles, the Spar is yellow; if Iron, red; if Tin, black; if Copper, it is either greenish or blueish, according to the Quality of the Menstruum Nature has furnished for dissolving the Particles of that Metal, and bringing them into a State of mixing in the Concretion; for Acids and Alkalis both dissolve Copper, but with this Difference of Colour, that the Solution with an Acid is green, and that with an Alkali is blue.
Though this Author was perfectly right, therefore, in his Opinion of these Substances partaking of the Nature of the Metals among which they were found; he errs in imagining that they are fusible, and melt with those Metals. He may very well, however, be pardoned in this, since it has been an Error which many later Authors, who had more Opportunities of informing themselves of the Truth than he can reasonably be supposed to have had, have also fallen into; nay, and many who imagine they understand these Things very well, from the constant Use of it in fluxing the Ores of Metals, believe the same of it even yet. This is however an absolutely erroneous Opinion, for Spar is not fusible, but calcines in the Fires used for melting the Ores of Metals. The Use it is of, in the fusing them is this: Those Ores are frequently clogged and loaded with Sulphurs, which make them very difficult of Fusion; and the Calx of Spar is of the same Use in that Case, that Lime, or any other fixed Alkali would be: That is, it absorbs those Sulphurs; and by that means destroying what would impede the Fusion of the Ore, does in some Sense assist its melting; but no one, who ever saw the Fusion of Ore with its Spar about it, ever yet observed the least Particle of that to melt.
The Pyritæ and Molares, as many Kinds of them were originally called, are no more capable of Fusion in the Fire than the Spars. They are Masses of mineral, saline, and sulphureous Matter, either in detached Pieces of different Figures and Textures; or in whole Veins. The various Kinds of them contain different Quantities of different Metals, but generally too small to be worth the Charge and Trouble of working. Gold, Silver, Copper, and Iron are frequently found thus in them, But the principal Substances of which they are formed are Salts, Sulphurs, and Earths. The common Coppers of our Shops is made from different Kinds of them, in different Quantities; and no Species yields it in such Plenty as the echinated Kind of the Chalk Pits of Kent and Surrey. The Marchasites, as those are particularly called which are not in detached Pieces, but run in Veins, or fill the perpendicular Fissures of Strata, often abound with Copper, and with a mineral, arsenical Juice, seldom found in the others; some of these also contain Antimony; others Bismuth, and some Iron and Tin. When they are very rich in these Metals, they lose the Name of Marchasites, andare called Ores. The Mineral, called in some Parts of England Mundick, is of this Kind, containing Copper and sometimes other Metals; but the Sulphur is so abundant in these kinds of Ores, that they are not to be fluxed without great Trouble; the Addition of Lime, or some similar Substance, is often necessary to bring them to fuse at all, and at best they are the most troublesome, and least profitable; unless where very rich indeed, of any Ores in the World.
This Author however was not single, though erroneous, in his Opinion of the Pyritæ and Molares melting in the Fire; his Master Aristotle had probably led him into it, who has, Met. L. 4. c. 6. τήκεται δὲ κὰι ὁ λίθος ὁ πυρίμαχος, ὥστε στάζειν κὰι ῥεῖν, τὸ δὲ ηγνύμενον ὅταν ῥυῇ πάλιν γίγνεται σκληρὸν, κὰι αἱ μύλιαι τήκονται ὥστε ῥεῖν.
- ↑ Some few Species of Flints are Substances of this Kind, and above all others that found in whole Strata (not in detached Masses or Nodules, as our common Flints are) and called Chert or Whern in some Parts of England; a Lump of this, put into a moderate Fire, will, as the Heat penetrates it, fly to Pieces in Scales or thin Flakes, which fall off, fromTime to Time, till the whole is reduced to a Mass of coarse Powder: but it is an Error to infer from this, that these Stones are not fusible; for the same Stone, or even the very Powder, into which it has been shattered by the Fire, put into a Crucible with Salt of Tartar, or any other fixed alkaline Salt, and placed in a stronger Fire, will melt, and boil in the Vessel; and form a very good Glass, as I have many Times experienced.
To learn the real Causes of the different Degrees of this Fusibility in different fossile Substances, it will be necessary, first, to consider the Cause of their Solidity, or, in other Words, of their Cohesion: and this, as I have before observed, is that Power residing in all Matter, called Attraction.
This Power, it has already been observed, is infinitely strongest at the Point of Contact: and therefore the Cohesion of all Bodies must be in Proportion to the Number of Points in which their constituent Particles touch one another. Those Particles therefore which have the least Solidity, with relation to their Surfaces, though they attract least at Distances, yet, when they touch, cohere the most intimately; but where, from contrary Causes, the Cohesion is small, as in spherical Bodies, whose Surfaces can only touch in a Point, their Particles easily recede from one another on any Impulse; and whenever they are set in Motion, Fluidity takes Place.
By what means Fire is an Agent in bringing Things into this State, is easily understood. Its Particles, which are very powerful and very active, insinuate themselves into the Substance of the Matter to be melted, break and divide its Parts, and occasion a much smaller Contact of them than there was before, and of Course a weaker Cohesion: more fiery Particles continually getting in as the Matter continues on the Fire; more and more diminish the Degree of Contact, till at last there is not enough of it to keep the Particles from rolling one over another, that is coming into a State of Fusion.
This is the general Cause of the Fusion of fossile and other Substances; and the different Degrees of Fire, they require to bring them to it, are proportioned to their different Contact of Parts, or Degrees of Cohesion. Such as have least Contacts melt soonest, and for this Reason Lead melts more readily than Gold. The different Gravity of the Substances has nothing to do in this, since it is not according to the Quantity of Matter they contain; but the Number of Points in which the Particles of that Matter touch one another; and for this Reason it is that Lead, which is heavier than most other Metals, notwithstanding its superior Quantity of Matter; melts also more readily than most others.
- ↑ The Stone here described is the Lapis Thracius of the later Authors, a Stone much talked of in all the Writings of the old Naturalists, and by some allowed a Place in the Catalogues of the Materia Medica; but now wholly unknown. There is, however, no question, from our Author's Account of this Substance, but that it was the very Thing afterwards well known under that Name. Bina, or Bena, the Place he mentions where it was found, was a Town in Thracia; and every Particular he has recorded of it has been since applied to the Lapis Thracius: Its inflammable Quality, disagreeable Smell, and the Manner in which it was found, were the same with those of the Thracius of the later Writers. This was well known to Dioscorides, &c. as is evident from what they have said of it; but there has been so much Confusion about it among the Writers since, that little more than the Name has been handed down to us: some have been of opinion, that it was a kind of Coal, others of Jet, and others of the Ampelites. What is to be gathered from the oldest Writers about it is this; that it was a hard bituminous Substance, very inflammable, of a brittle Texture, and of a very disagreeable Smell when burning. It was sometimes dug, as our Author observes, but was principally found in the River Pontus, into which it had probably been washed from the Banks; in the Strata of which it was originally lodged; by the dashing of the waves in Storms, or dislodged by other Accidents. As is also the Case with the Pyritæ, Ludus Helmonti, Amber, and many other of the fossile Substances, which are now generally found on the Shores of the Sea or large Rivers: of these a, diligent Enquirer will always find a much larger Quantity in the Strata of the neighbouring Land, than are seen washed on the Shore; and generally many standing out from among the Matter of the Strata of the Shores or adjacent Cliffs, and ready to be washed out by Rains, or dislodged by the Earth of the Strata cracking after Frost; and so rolled down into the River: though in their natural Situation out of the reach of its Waves; the dashing of which in Storms and high Tides against the Banks, are the more common Means of getting them out.
Most of the Editions have it ἀνθρακοῦνται τῇ θραύσει; Salmasius first restored the Passage to its proper Sense, by altering it to τῇ καύσει, which there is no room to doubt was the original Reading. Nor is that the only Thing in which this Sentence is indebted to that excellent Critic for restoring it to its native Sense and Purity; as indeed are many other Parts of this Author's Works.
- ↑ The Spinus, or, as the excellent Critic just mentioned would have it called, Spilus, σπῖλος, was another indurated Bitumen of the Lapis Thracius Kind, of which Theophrastus is not the only Author who has recorded this memorable Quality: but we have no Right either to confirm or question it, as the Substance is now wholly unknown to us.
The general Characteristics of these solid Bitumens, the Class of Bodies the Author is here describing, are, that they are dense, dry, and friable Substances, easily inflammable, fusible by Fire, and condensing by Cold. They are soluble in Oil, not to be disunited by Water, as the argillaceous Earths are; and yield in Distillation a large Quantity of fetid Oil.
The Bodies of this Class, known to the Antients and understood under this general Name, were, beside the Thracius and Spinus, 1. The Asphaltum, called also Bitumen Judaicum, and by Serapion, Gummi funerum; this was found in Dioscorides's Time about Sidon in Phœnicia, Zant in Sicily, and in Judæa. The Account in the sacred Writings, of its having been used as Mortar in the building the Tower of Babel, is unquestionable: Strabo and others of the Antients asserting, that it was found plentifully about Babylon; and that the Buildings of the old Babylon were of Brick cemented with this Substance.
2. The Pissasphaltos, found, according to Dioscorides, in the Ceraunian Mountains of Apollonia; this was not so hard as the former, and of a more pleasant Smell; it is now found in the Campania of Rome, near a small Town called Catho, where it ouzes through the Crannies of Rocks, and is at first of the Consistence of Honey, but soon dries and becomes hard.
3. Amber, of which the Author treats hereafter in this Work.
4. Jet, the Gagates of Dioscorides, and black Amber of the Shops; a dry, hard, shining Substance, of a fine black, burning like Pitch, and emitting a thick black Smoke. Its Name it had from Gagis, a Town in Lycia, where it was originally found: it is now dug in Prussia, France, Germany, Sweden, and some Parts of England.
5. Cannel Coal, the Ampelites of Dioscorides, called also Terra Pharmacitis by some Authors, though its Use in Medicine at present is almost unknown. This is as hard as the foregoing, and takes an excellent Polish; we have it in many Parts of England, where it is turned into Toys of different Kinds, And
6. The Lithanthrax, or common Coal, well known to all.
These were the solid Bitumens, known as such to the Antients, and which, though they were not all known so early as in this Author's Days, I judged it not amiss thus shortly to mention here; that it may be observed from their Qualities and Descriptions, and those of the two mentioned by the Author, that it was neither of these that he knew, by either of the two Names of those he has here described: but that he did know the last is certain.
- ↑ The Lipara Stone (so called from Lipara, one of the Æolian Islands, from whence it was usually brought among the Pumices, of which those Islands always furnished a large Quantity) is a small Stone, usually about the Bigness of a Filbert, of an irregular and uncertain Shape, and porous friable Constitution, like that of the Pumices, but more easily crumbling into Powder between the Fingers than even the softeft Kinds of them. The Colour is generally of a dusky grey, and the whole external Face of it evidently shews that it has suffered a Change by the Fire. The Ancients had these Stones in great Esteem, and Pliny has recorded an idle Tradition concerning them, which, I suppose, was then generally believed, suffita ea omnes bestias evocari; but at present they are so little regarded, that the Writers on these Subjects have even forgot to name them: and Wormius, the only Naturalist of the more late ones, who had actually received them, and gave them a Place in his Museum, and a Description in the History of it, seems not to have known that they ever had any Name at all. I don't know that any Body else has observed that his lapili cinerei Ætnæ, are the Liparis or Liparæus Lapis of the Antients; but his Description so exactly agrees with some Stones I have, which I received with some Pumices from Hecla, and have always judged to be the Liparæi, that I make not the least question of their being the very same: His Words are, Ejusdem montis (sc. Ætnæ) et ab eodem tractu, ad me delati sunt Lapilli, cinerei, obscuri & adusti, qui vi ignis naturam suam plane amiserunt, & porosi sunt redditi, læves & inequales, ita ut ad naturam Pumicum quam proxime accedant, sed friabihores sunt & facile in minutiores partes, vel digitorum compress dissiliant.
Besides those which I have from Iceland, I have sometimes seen of them among Quantities of Pumice. I cannot say I ever had the Fortune to find any one in a Mass of the Pumice; or ever had an Opportunity of observing their Texture before they had passed the Fire: but the Account this Author gives of them may probably enough be true in both Circumstances; it being very common to observe small Stones of the Flint, Pebble, and other Kinds, immersed in Masses of a different Texture; and the intense Degree of Heat these, with the Pumices, must have suffered, might very probably effect Changes as great or much greater, than between the present State of this Stone and what this Author describes to have been its Original.
As to what regards the Pumice itself, as the Author hereafter describes it more at large, I shall reserve to that Place what I have to observe about it.
- ↑ The Name of this Place is differently spelt in different Editions of this Author, some having it Τετράδι, others Τεταρίδι, and probably neither of them right; for there is no mention of any Place in Sicily of either the one or the other of these Names in the antient Geography: But however uncertain the Place of Production of these Stones be, what our Author observes of them is very well worth noting, that they became light, porous, and like Pumices from the Action of the Fire. It were much to be wish'd we were now acquainted with this Stone, since if we knew any which we could by Fire reduce to a Pumice, it would give us a Light into the Origin of that Body; which we at present very much want.
The Substance next mentioned is evidently of the Class of solid Bitumens, and a Species of the Lapis Thracius before described. The Residuum after burning, or Caput mortuum of all the Bitumens, is a calcined Earth; and Rocks and Promontories are the most common Places out of which they are found exsudating.
- ↑
The Substance here described, whatever Mistakes there have been among Authors since about it, appears to me to be evidently no other than the common Pit Coal; and I have made it appear as clearly so in the Translation, only by having properly rendered the Word ἄνθρακες, the carelessly misunderftanding which Word alone has been the Occasion of all the erroneous Guesses about the Substance here described. The Authors of these seem all to have understood the Word ἄνθραξ, as signifying Fossile or Pit Coal; and therefore, as the Author compares the burning of this Substance to that; they were necessitated to think of some other Substance that he might here mean; as it was impossible he should intend to compare a Thing to itself.
Wormius, on this Foundation, imagined, that he meant the Cannel Coal: Quod Galenus vocat Ampelitidem, &c. Theophrastus Carbones vocat, quod eorum colorem habeat, & vices gerat. Thus is Theophrastus, according to Custom, accused of saying Things he never meant; because the People who quote him have not been at the Pains to understand him: ἐκκαίοται δὲ καὶ προῦνται καθάπερ οἱ ἄνθρακες, is evidently, they kindle and burn like Wood Coals, or, as we call it, Charcoal; for that is the genuine and determinate Sense of the Word ἄνθραξ in Greek, and Carbo in Latin; as is evident from the other Works of this Author, Pliny, and all the other old Naturalists. Even the more correct of the. Moderns, when they would express what we call Pit Coal, the Substance here described by the Author, never use the Words ἄνθραξ or Carbo alone, but always Carbo fossilis, and λιθάνθραξ. See Woodward, Charlton, Merret, &c. The similar Use of this Bitumen got it the Name of Coal, but always with an Addition that distinguished it from what was more commonly and properly so called; and expressed its not being of vegetable, but fossile Origin.
- ↑ It is much to be qustioned, whether this was the true original Reading, and genuine Sense of the Author; in all probability some Errors in the old Editions have made this Passage express what he never meant to say. The Subftance, and indeed the only Substance described by the other antient Naturalists as resembling black Wood, is the Gagates or Jet, before mentioned among the Bitumens: but that has no such Quality as the Author has here ascribed to this Stone of Scaptesylæ.
The Antients had a common Opinion of the Bitumens, that the Fire of them was encreased by Water; and extinguished by Oil; and very probably this was the Sentiment originally delivered here by the Author; however Errors upon Errors in different Copies of his Works may since have altered the Sense of them. The Stone itself was probably a Bitumen of the Lapis Thracius Kind, as the Place from whence it has its Name was a Town of that Country.
- ↑ The Author having now gone through the different Effects of Fire on the various Kinds of Stones which are subject to be acted upon by it, comes here to the Consideration of certain others, which either from the different Matter of their constituent Particles, or the different Manner of their Combinations, he esteems of a Texture not to be injured by it; but altogether safe against its Efforts; and, as his own Words express it, incombustible.
None of these indeed are of Power to resist the solar Fire collected by a great reflecting Burning-glass; but, in general, are first calcined as it were, and split and shattered in Pieces by it, and afterwards melted into Glass. This, however, was probably a Kind of Fire, unknown in these extreme Degrees of Power, till very long after the Time of this Author. The culinary Fire, or that used in those Times for fluxing Ores, the strongest they then knew, tho' much less intense than those we now use on that Occasion (of which there are many unquestionable Proofs; nay, that even those of the Workers in Metals, but a few Ages ago were so) had no Power of making any Change in these Stones; therefore the Author is not to be censured for esteeming them incombustible; or not knowing what it was impossible he should have seen. He is to be understood with regard to the Action of the Fires used in his Time; and he must then be allowed to have been well acquainted with the Subjects he treats of in this Division of his Work.
- ↑ The Antients expressed by this Word all the red transparent Gems, which have been since distinguished under the Names of the different Kinds of Ruby, Granate, Hyacynth, &c. all which they esteemed only different Species of the Carbuncle: And in Justification of them it must be acknowledged, that fossile Bodies not being organized, in general want those fixt and determinate Characteristics, by which those of the vegetable and animal Kingdoms are unalterably distinguished from each other. Those of the Gems in particular have fewer fixed and unvariable Differences by which their Genera and Species may be determinately fixed than any other.
The Reason of the Difficulty in regularly methodizing and distinguithing the Genera and subordinate Species in the various Classes of the fossile Kingdom, is, that in the Time of their original Concretions their Particles scarce ever coalesced in perfect Purity; but took up among them, from amidst the Mass of fluid Matter in which they were at that Time sustained, Particles of extraneous Matter, of various Kinds in various Places; so that not only the external Face, but even the interior Constitution of the same Species is found in different Regions very different; and in many Specimens not to be known at first sight even to the most accurate Observer. But if this be the Case in fossile Substances in general, it is much more particularly so in this Class of them, the Gems; the Differences of which are owing to the Distribution of a certain kind of Particles in their Masses; which are so very uncertain, both in Quantity and Manner of placing, and in their various Effects upon the Mass, that scarce any thing absolute is to be determined from them.
The Gems are naturally angular, as are the Crystals: but like them, from various Accidents in their Formation, they are found sometimes in rude or shapeless Masses; and when angular, they have still all that Variation of Figure which we see take place in Crystal and Spar; from the different Disturbances of their Crystalization. In all these Cases a various Number of Angles may be occasioned, as we see in Salts, from the Accidents of their Concretion. In these, as well as in those, we have the same Kind in different Figures; and as we can crystalize them under the Eye, we can determine the Causes of those Alterations. The round, or pebble Gems, seem not to have been original in that Form, but worn to it by rolling about in a Fluid.
The Hardness and the Lustre of the Gems, must distinguish them from all other Stones; for if we considered their Form, as their essential Character, many Crystals would assume the Name: and Cronstedt has well determined, that a certain Spar he had seen in Figure of the most regular Diamond, must then be called, a Diamond.
No peculiar Construction, no Form of constituent Parts is visible in the Gems: they appear as Masses of uniform Nature; and they break irregularly and indeterminately; yet there is in all a really plated Structure. The Lapidaries find this in some, and can split them; the Burning Glass discovers it in the rest; and when turned to it in a right Direction, tears them to pieces: they split into the thinnest Plates that can be conceived, and seem to have been composed in the Manner of the Talcs, only more compact. 'Tis pity this Character is not more obvious: for it affords a real distinctive Mark between the Gems, and all other Stones: Crystals, which seem to come nearest to them, have it not.
Their Colours are less essential, for they can in most be driven away by Fire; and Nature sometimes gives the Gem without them; they are evidently owing to the Metals; for we can by means of Metals, give the same to Glass; our artificial Gem.
The Salt System of Linnæus appears here almost ludicrous. To a truly philosophic Eye, the Difference of Estimation and Price are nothing; but the common Reader will hardly keep his Countenance when he sees the Diamond reduced to a Species of Allum; and the Emerald of Borax, Fossils Arrang'd, p. 137, 138.
What can be ascertained in general is this:
The Mass of constituent Matter in them all, is a pellucid crystalline Substance, which is in different Kinds of different Degrees of Hardness, from that of the Diamond to that of the merest shattery Crystal. This crystalline Matter, had it concreted in perfect Purity, had been colourless alike in all: and the various Species had been distinguishable only by their different Degrees of Hardness: but as this Matter, in the time of its Coalescence, assumed into it any Particles of a proper degree of Gravity and Fineness, which happened to float in its Way, it became by that Means different not only in Colour, nay, and in Degree of Colour, according to the Nature and Quantity of the Particles it took up into itself; but from their different Nature was also altered in what alone could have been its determinate Characteristics, its Hardness and specific Gravity. Many Reasons may be alledged why the Particles thus assumed into the crystalline Nodules at the Time of their Formation, must have been principally of the metalline Kind; and: we find, in effect, that they were so. The various Colours of the Gems have their Rise from these Admixtures; and, according to what I have before observed as to the colouring of Spars by the same Means, when the metalline Matter thus mixed with the crystalline was Lead, the Stone became a Topaz, or, as the Antients called it, a Chrysolite: for it is very evident, that what they called the Topaz, we now call the Chrysolite; and what they called the Chrysolite, we now, on the contrary, call the Topaz.
Our Topaz is a very elegant and very beautiful Gem, of which the Jewellers have two Kinds, the Oriental and Occidental; the Oriental are of a fine pale yellow like the Jonquil Flower. They are of very great Splendour, and equal the Ruby in Hardness. These are brought from Arabia, and many Parts of the East Indies. The Occidental are often very beautiful; but are distinguished from the Oriental by their Softness, for they are no harder than common Crystal: and by a foxy redness with the yellow. We have them from Silesia and Bohemia.
The Topaz of the Antients, now called the Chrysolite, differs from these in Colour, for it has always an Admixture of green with the yellow; probably from Particles of Copper dissolved in an Acid, and taken up with those of the Lead into the Matter of the Gem, at the Time of its original Concretion.
As these Gems have their Colours from this accidental Admixture of extraneous Particles, they may also be divested of them by Fire; without any Injury to their Texture: and the Oriental Topaz thus rendered colourless, is, like some other Gems to be hereafter described, sometimes made to counterfeit a Diamond.
When Lead and Iron together entered the Composition, the Stone became a Hyacynth; when Iron alone, the Granate, and other red Gems, or, as the Antients in one Word express it, the Carbuncles were produced: the Ruby is particular, and owes its dye to Gold. When Copper, dissolved by Acids got in, the Emerald appeared; by Alcalies, the Sapphire; and so of the rest. No Wonder is it, therefore, that the Gems in particular have never been perfectly reduced to Method; since there is so little Room for determining any thing fixed and stable in regard to them; and when the Operations by which Nature gave them their Existence, have been so uncertain; and liable to such numberless accidental Variations. - ↑ It was from this Property of resembling a burning Coal when held against the Sun, that this Stone obtained the Names Carbunculus and ἄνθραξ; which afterwards being misunderftood, there grew an Opinion of its having the Qualities of a burning Coal, and shining in the dark; and as no Gem ever was, or ever will be found endued with that Quality, it was supposed that the true Carbuncle of the Antients was lost: but it was long generally believed, that there had some time been such a Stone. The Words of this Author, however, set it very clear, that this Appearance in the Sun only was the Occasion of the Name. That Species of Carbuncle of the Antients which possessed this Quality in the greatest Degree, was the Garamantine or Carthaginian; and as the Author gives also Carthage for the Place whence this which he here describes was brought, there is no doubt but the particular Species here meant, is the Garamantine Carbuncle of the Antients, and that is the true Garnet of the Moderns. Experience shews, that this, Stone has more the Appearance of a fire Coal in the Sun than the Ruby or any other of the red Gems; and it is famous for sustaining the Force of Fire unhurt; which is the other great Characteristic of that Stone mentioned by the Author. This Stone is often very beautiful and valuable: I saw one sold this Winter, 1774, at an Auction of Mr. Christie's, under the Name of a Jacinth, for a very considerable Sum of Money; and very well it was worth it.
- ↑ The Miletian Kind is generally supposed to be that called by other Authors the Alabandine, as the Places from whence they have their Names are in the same Kingdom. Theophrastus, who describes the Miletian, has not mentioned the Alabandine; and Pliny, who describes that, has not named the Miletian.
The other Gems, by the Antients included in the general Name Carbuncle, are distinuigshed by later Writers into various Species of the Ruby, Garnet, Almandine, and Hyacynth; and are,
1. The Rubinus verus, the True Ruby. This is of a fine blood Colour, and of extreme Hardness, and, when large, is by some still called a Carbuncle. This is from Cambaja, Calicut, Coria, and the Island of Ceylon.
2. The Balass Ruby, Rudinus Balassius or Pallacius. This is of a paler red than the former, and tinged with a mixture of blue; its common Shape is oblong and pointed. And either this or the Rock Ruby, as it is called,which is a Species of the Garnet hereafter to be mentioned, is probably the Carbunculus Amethystizontes of Pliny. The Balass Ruby comes principally from the Island of Ceylon.
3. The Rubinus Spinellus, the Spinell Ruby. This is of a clearer red than the Balass, but is not so bright nor hard as the true Ruby.
4. The Rubacus, the Rubacelle. This is red, with a cast of yellow, and is the least valuable of all the Kind.
5. The Granatus verus, the true Garnet. This is a very beautiful Gem, and was, as before observed, the Carbuncle of Theophrastus, and Carbunculus Garamanticus of the Antients in general: Its Colour is a deep red, approaching to that of a ripe Mulberry, but held to the Sun, or set on a light Foil, a true Fire Colour. This is sometimes found of a considerable Size.
6. The Granatus Sorranus, the Sorane Garnet. This is of an intense red, but with some mixture of yellowish, or of the Colour of the Hyacynth of the Moderns.
7. That Species of the Garnet called the Rock Ruby, the Rudinus rupium, and by the Italians Rubino de la Rocca. This is a very hard Gem, and is of a fine red, mixed with a violet Colour.
8. The Almandine; a Stone of a middle Nature, between the Ruby and Garnet. This is the Alabandicus of Pliny, and probably the Milesian Carbuncle of our Author already described.
g. The Amandine. This was the Træzenius of the Antients, and was variegated with red and white; but is at present scarce known.
10. The Sandastrum of Pliny, a Gem now wholly lost.
11. The Hyacynth of the Antients; truly and properly a violet-coloured Gem, and which, if it be now at all known, is ranked by the Moderns among the Amethysts. The Stones we know by the Name of Hyacynths, being Gems of a yellowish red in three or four Degrees, which will be more particularly spoken of hereafter.
- ↑ The Diamond has been thought to come nearest of all Gems to deserving the Character of incombustible. It will bear extreme Degrees of common Fire, and that for a long Time together, and come out unhurt. But it suffers some Damage, if suddenly brought into the Cold after these severe Trials; and much more by the Burning Glass. But there is yet a Quality which the Diamond shews in the Fire different from all other Gems, and by which it is distinguished from them all; for there is a certain degree of Fire in which it is volatile. I shewed this, very many Years ago, to the late Excellent Lord Granard and Mr. Charles Stanhope, at my House in Blomsbury; by placing a small Diamond in a wind Furnace. We saw the Progress of the Operation: the Diamond was first penetrated by the Fire throughout its whole Substance; and appeared a burning Coal: it then shivered and cracked in many places, and afterwards became smaller and smaller till it entirely vanished: no Part nor Remnant of it was to be found.
The Diamond is the hardest and most resplendent of all Gems, and has in all Ages been esteemed much more valuable than all others: its Colour, when pure, as it generally is, is that of perfectly clear Water; but it is sometimes found tinged with metalline Particles, assumed into it at the Time of its original Formation, as in the other Gems; and is thence yellowish, reddish, or bluish, and sometimes, but very rarely, greenish. As the Diamond thus is sometimes of the Colour of other Gems, but greatly superior in Hardness to them; so the common Crystal, sometimes, from the same Accidents, resembles them, and is much softer, and of little Value. Crystals thus tinged are what the Jewellers call Bastard Emeralds, Sapphires, &c.
The Diamond is compofed of various Laminæ laid close one on another; and Jewellers of Skill will sometimes find the Joinings, and with the Edge of a fine Instrument split a Diamond into two of equal apparent Surfaces.
If the plain Surfaces of the Plates of a Diamond be turned to the Focus of the strongest Burning-glass, it receives no Hurt, even by that powerful Fire; but if the Edges and Joinings of the Laminæ are turned to it, the Stone separates at them, is reduced into a number of Scales or thin Flakes; and lost.
The Form of the Brazil Diamond differs from the Oriental, as well as do its Qualities. There are Shirly, or Basaltine, resemblances of all the Oriental Gems; and this is such of the Diamond; and no other. De Laet was acquainted with it, and with its qualities. Agricola knew its Dodecahedral form. Wallerius accurately describes its Faces by their cubic Shape. The Bravil Diamond has the same Electric, and the same Phosphoric Properties, with the Oriental: After it has been held in the Sun, it has a silvery Brightness in the dark; and the same Quality, in some Degree, when rubbed: and it takes the Foil, as the Oriental Diamond. But they all want the perfect Hardness of the Oriental Diamond; and they have somewhat less specific gravity; and they can be melted by the extream force of Fire, which the Oriental Diamond cannot.
We are not to expect all Diamonds in their perfect crystalized form; we see them rounded in the Manner of the pebble Crystals, and like all other crystalized Stones, they vary in the Number of the Angles, even in the same Species.
Like all the other crystalline Stones, this is also liable to be tinged to all Colours; but these Tinges it receives in so small a Quantity, and in a Degree so delicate, that it is a Doubt whether a coloured Diamond be not more beautiful even than a perfect clear one.
We talk of our vast Diamonds, the Tuscan, the Sancy, and Pitt's; but what are these to that of the Mogul, which before cutting weighed very near eight hundred Carats? Fossils arrang'd, p. 139, 140.
- ↑ The Author here explains upon the Manner in which these Stones resist the Action of the Fire, which he declares to be by their containing naturally no Moisture, which he has before declared to be essential to Fusibility; not by their having already suffered all the Change they were liable to, from their having been before exposed to that Element. He gives the very rational Opinion of some People in his Time, and which we shall easily perceive hereafter. was also his own, that some Substances, commonly supposed in their native State, had certainly been wrought upon by Fire; and had by that means been divested of whatever that Element could drive out of them: and brought into a Condition of not suffering any farther Changes by the same Means.
- ↑ The Author mentioning it but as the Opinion of some, that the Pumice had already passed the Fire, and by it been reduced into its present State; is a Proof that the general Opinion in his Time was, that it was in its native Condition. This seems to have been an Error of the later as well as the antient Writers of Fossils, who have almost all given it a Place among the native fossil Stones, as if Nature had formed it as we see it: Whereas there is all the Evidence that our Senses can give, that it is no more than a Cinder; the Remainder of some other fossile Body calcined by a violent Fire either subterranean unseen, and perhaps since extinguished, or that of the burning Mountains, on and about all which it is constantly found; and that in vast Quantities. The more violent Explosions of these may have tossed immense Quantities of it to Places so distant, as to make People forget its coming thence; or into Seas, whose Tides and Storms may have carried them to other Shores, near which no such Repositories of it are situated; and this might yet more puzzle and mislead People about its Origin. The great Quantities of Pumices found in this Manner, far from any Fires by which they might have been formed; floating on the Surface of the Sea, thus thrown on it, or perhaps raised by the bursting of Vulcanos from its Bottom; and something altered from their original Figure and Colour, by being washed and rounded by the Motion of the Waves, gave Rise to an Opinion in some, that such were another Kind, different from those of the burning Mountains; and that they were formed by a Concretion of the Froth of the Sea: in this, as the Author observes, they had the apparent Testimony of their Senses. Many have erroneously imagined, that by this Kind, supposed by some to be formed of the Froth of the Sea, this Author meant the Alcyonium; and have fallen foul upon him for ranking that Substance among the Pumices: But no one has done him more Injustice in this point than his Editor De Laet, who, though in his Edition of this Author he does Honour to Furlanus, for having justified him in that point, and observed that this was not his Meaning; yet afterwards, in his own History of Gems, &c. charges him with it, L. 2. p. 131. Theophrastus etiam alcyonium, quod ex maris spuma concrescat, Pumicem vocat.
- ↑ For these there is, indeed, the apparent and unquestionable Testimony of our Senses, that they owe their present Mode of Existence to the Action of Fire, scarce any fossile Substance being of Strength and Solidity enough to bear the excessive Degree of it in these Places, without being affected and altered in its Form; and reduced to a Slag or Cinder of such Kind and Texture as its constituent Parts disposed it most readily to fall into. As to those found floating on the Sea, I have observed how hardly the Author has fared about them in De Laet's Hands; but Boetius has yet infinitely more puzzled this Cause in regard to him, and seems even to have misunderstood the Misunderstandings of others concerning him; for he tells us, L. 2. p. 400, speaking of the Pumice in general, Ἁλκυόνιον a Theophrasto vocari putant, quod e marina spuma coactus sit: And this is one of the many Instances in which this good old Writer is so strangely misrepresented, that it is impossible, from the Accounts of others, to make the least Guess at what he has left us. The very Word Ἁλκυόνιον is no where to be found in this whole Book; and what he is generally charged with is, not the calling the Pumice Alcyonium, as this Author imagines; but the Alcyonium a Pumice: And even that Accusation, we see, from a careful Review of his own Words, is wholly groundless and erroneous.
- ↑ In the other Editions of this Author there is the Word Διαβάρου where I have given Ἀραβιοῦ; the former is the Name of no Stone in the World, and the latter of one very aptly placed in this Class of Fossils; and which all the Antients have described, but this Author no where else has the Name of: There is therefore no question but that this was the original Reading, and the common Text, Διαβάρου, no more than an Error which got early into the Copies, and has been ever since (as Errors usually are) carefully and exactly preserved. This is also the Opinion of De Laet, who, however careless of this Author in his Liber de Gemmis, yet is a thoughtful and good Critic on him in many Places in his Edition of this Treatise.
This Arabicus, or, as it is sometimes called, Arabus Lapis, is described also by Dioscorides, Pliny, Isidorus, &c. as a white Stone, resembling the purest Ivory, which when burnt became spungy, porous, and friable; in short, assumed the Form of the Pumice; and was used, like it, as a Dentrifice. Dioscorides, speaking of it, says, Ὁδόντων δὲ σμῆγμα γίνεται καυθεὶς άλλιστον. and Ὀ δὲ Ἀραβικὸς λεγόμενος λιθος ἔοικεν ἐλέφαντος ἀσπέλου. Pliny, Arabicus Lapis Ebori similis dentifrictis accommodatur crematus. And this was so early as in those Times, and even continues yet to be one principal Use of all the Pumice Kind,
- ↑ That all true genuine Pumices are formed by the Action of Fire, I believe, is an unquestionable Certainty; but as the antient as well as modern Naturalists have often confusedly placed among them, and under their Names, other Stones of different Kinds, and absolutely different Origin, though something resembling them in external Figure, the Author does very judiciously here in alloting a different Process of Nature for the Formation of such.
- ↑ These Pumices, as they are called, of Nisuros, seem not only an Instance of the different Operations of Nature used in the Formation of the different Pumices; but of there having been Stones of wholly different Kinds and Origin ranked among them. The Description the Author gives of them, proves them to be no genuine Pumices, but Tophi; natural and original Nodules, or loose Masses of Matter; covered with a Crust, as most of the natural Nodules are, but none of the Pumices ever are seen to be; nor, indeed, is it easy to be conceived, from their manner of Formation, how they should: These were fossile Substances, therefore, of some other Class, which, as they in a superficial Manner resembled the Pumice, the indeterminate Manner of writing in those early Times, had given Occasion to be ranked among them. What they really were is not easy, at this distance of Time, to determine; but the most probable Conjecture is, that they were Pyritæ; Specimens of which I have at this Time, that bear some rude external Resemblance of the Pumice Kind; and we shall presently see this Author describing a Pumice, which he says is something like one Species of the Pyritæ, called Molaris; it may give some Light into this Case to observe, that Strabo, mentioning this Island, says, Saxosa est & molaris lapidis copia prædita. De Laet imagines the Stone described by our Author must have been very different from that of Strabo's, because it was liable to crumble to pieces in the Fingers; but as I have already observed, that the Molaris of the Antients was a Species of the Pyrites, and as no Stone is so liable to crumble in pieces as the Pyrites, when it has lain some time exposed to the Air, and the Salts have shot and got loose, I am so far from being of his Opinion, that I look upon it as a Certainty, that the Nisura Pumice of our Author, and Molaris of Strabo, are the very same Substance; and that Strabo's Words are a great Confirmation of my Conjecture; as is also the Size our Author allots the Stone, and its Property of crumbling in pieces, which he also observes was not universal, but only happened to some of them, those, I imagine, which had lain most exposed, and the Salts of which had been let loose by the Humidity of the Air, while the others continued firm and solid, as those in England and other Places do, while lodged in the Strata they were originally deposited amongst. This I take to have been the Occasion of the different Degrees of Hardness of this Substance which our Author has described, though the Philosophy of his Times had not looked far enough into Nature to see the Caue.
- ↑ The beginning of this Sentence appears to have been always hitherto faultily printed in the Editions which have come to our Knowledge; the Honour of setting it right, by the Emendation according to which I have given it, belongs to De Laet; whom it is much more Pleasure to me to name thus with Respect than Censure; though an earnest Desire of doing the Author Justice, and finding his true Meaning, the only End I have in view in these Annotations on him, sometimes obliges me to speak in that manner. What is here καὶ ἀμμώδης, is in the other Editions ἡ καὶ ἄμμος; which, as Sand was not the Substance here treated of, could never have been the original Reading.
The Island of Melos, sometime called also Mimalis, has been always known to abound with Pumices, and those of the very finest Kind; which it did also in this Author's Time, as appears by his Description of their being light and sandy, or easily rubbed to Powder; from which last Quality, possessed in some Circumstances in a much greater degree, it was principally, I suppose, that the Pyritæ of Nisuros obtained the Name of Pumice: As from some like Similitude of Substances did the Stones next mentioned here under the Pumice Name, and said to be produced in other Stones; and which, whatever they were, as it is not easy at this distance of Time, and with the little Light we have from the Writings of the Antients, to ascertain, I am perfectly convinced, however, from the Account of their being found in other Stone, and that as we cannot but conclude from the Detail, unaltered in its own Texture, were no genuine Pumices.
The Differences afterwards assigned to the different Species of the Pumice, are what may be observed in a greater or lesser degree in the various Kinds we now have brought from Germany, the East Indies, and the burning Mountains; and the Author appears to have been very well acquainted with them: His assigning a greater Degree of the abstergent Quality to that from the Shores than that from the burning Mountains; and a greater than even in that, to those of the Sea, is probably very just, though not now regarded, as the Sea Salt incorporated in the Mass of those, must add much to this Quality.
The Author having now gone through the Nature of the Pumices, returns to the Consideration of those Stones he was before describing, and from the History of which he had looked on this as a Digression. The Stones here treated of, are what he has before named among the Gem Kind, as I have already observed in regard to the Sense of the Word σφραγίδιον; some of the Species of which he observes differ only in their external Figures and Colours, and others in more peculiar Qualities.
- ↑ The Carnelian is one of the semipellucid Gems, and has its Name Carneolus, Carniolus, or, as it is sometimes improperly written, Corniolus, from its Colour, which, in the different Degrees in various Kinds, resembles Flesh with more or less of the Blood in it; and Sardus or Sarda, from Sardinia, the Place where it was originally found. The several Kinds of this Stone are found in different Places, and our Lapidaries make a great Distinction between the Oriental and Occidental, which differ extremely in Hardness. The Antients divided this, as they did also other Gems, into Male and Female (as will be seen hereafter in this Author) in regard to their deeper or paler Colour; both which Colours, however, are sometimes found in different Parts of the same Stone. The Jewellers of our time reckon four Species of Carnelian; the common or red, the white, the yellow, and the Beryll Carnelian; the first of these is again divided into Male and Female, and is much in esteem for Seals; we have it from the East Indies, as also from Bohemia, Silesia, Sardinia, and many other Places; nor is our own Kingdom without it, though I have never yet found any here perfectly fine. The white is a very beautiful Stone, of a fine Grain, and equal Hardness, with many Kinds of the red: it is not perfectly white, but rather what we call a Pearl Colour, white with a slight Admixture of blue. The yellow is a very beautiful Stone, often of a fine Flame Colour, and more transparent than either of the former; this is found in the East Indies and Bohemia only. The last, or Beryll Carnelian, is properly the Male Oriental Kind; it is of a deeper Colour than any of the others, as also much harder, and more transparent: Some of our Jewellers, knowing of no other Beryll but this, name it simply the Beryll; but it ought never to be so called but with the Addition of its own proper Name Carnelian. The Beryll of the Antients was a Stone of quite another Kind, transparent, and of a bluish green; and evidently the very Gem which we now call the Aqua Marina. Besides those above named, we have three less perfect Carnelians, yet beautiful enough; the brown, which is the Carneolus Fuscus of Cronstedt; the dotted, the Carneolus Stigmitas of Wallerius; and the veiny Carneolus Lineatus of the same Author. This last I have lately seen very beautiful from Scotland, scarce inferior to the East Indian.
See Fossils Arrang’d, p. 209.
- ↑ The Jasper is another of the semipellucid Stones; it is much of the same Grain and Texture with the Agates, but not so hard, or capable of so elegant a Polish, nor does it approach so near Transparency; its general Colour is green, but it is spotted or clouded with several others, as yellow, blue, brown, red, and white. It is found both in the East and West Indies, in Bohemia, in many Parts of Germany, and in England: I have a Specimen of it found. here, little inferior to the Oriental, and better than any I ever saw from Germany. Our Lapidaries distinguish it into the Oriental and Common; and subdivide those Differences according to the Colour of the Spots or Veins. The Oriental is much harder, and capable of a much better Polish than any of the others; it is of a bluish green, and the Veins are generally red.
The European or common Jaspers are of all Degrees of green, and variegated with several Colours; the English, in particular, are hard, commonly of a deep green, often not veined or spotted at all, and when they are, it is commonly with red or flesh Colour, sometimes with white, and sometimes with both those Colours.
The Heliotrope, or common Blood-stone, is of this Kind also, and very little, if really at all, different from the Oriental Jasper; the Colour is, like that, of a bluish green, and the Variegation red, but in Spots rather than Veins, and of a deeper Colour.
- ↑ The Sapphire of the Antients, here described, was a Stone very different from the Gem we now know by that Name, and was of the Cyanus, or Lapis Lazuli Kind; but not as some have too hastily judged, the Lapis Lazuli itself[B 2].
We shall find by what this Author says hereafter, that these were evidently two different Stones; and indeed Pliny, and the rest of the antient Naturalists, if carefully read, will be found to have clearly diftinguished them; and described them to be what they really were, different Species of the same Genus. They were both mixed Masses, both blue, variegated with white, and yellow; but they differed in this, that the Cyanus had the yellow Matter, in form of Dust, irregularly and confusedly mixed among the other Matter of the Mass; whereas the Sapphire was beautifully spangled with it, in regular, distinct, and separate Spots. These were its greatest Characteristic, and obtained the Stone its constant Epithets of χρυσόπαστος and χρυσοστιγής. Inest (says Pliny, speaking of the Cyanus) ei aliguando et aureus pulvis, non qualis in Sapphirinis, Sapphirus enim et aureis punctis collucet; or, according to Salmasius, in Sapphiris enim aurum punctis collucet; and others of the Ancients describing it, have Σάπφειρος λίθος ἔων σπιλάδας χρυσίȣ ὡς ἐν ϛίγμασι; and λθος ὡρκῖος ἔχων σπιλάδας χρυσίȣ ὡς ἐν ϛίγμασι.
Upon the Whole, what can be collected from a careful Perusal of the Antients on this Subject is, that the Stone they knew by the Name of the Sapphire, was an opake, or at best but imperfectly transparent, Gem, of a fine blue, deeper than that of the Lapis Lazuli, and variegated with Veins of a white sparry Subftance, and distinct separate Spots of a gold Colour.
The Sapphire of the Antients was thereforenot only not the same with the Gem we now know by that Name; but had not even the least Resemblance of it: I see no Reason, however, to conclude from hence, as Woodward and some others have done, that our Sapphire was unknown to them: it was unquestionably of the Number of their transparent Gems, though not, distinguished by a particular generical Name. De Laet imagines it was one of the many Kinds they reckoned of the Amethyst or Hyacinth; but I think it appears much more probably to have been the Gem they called the Beryllus Aëroides; as they did, for the same Reason, their blue Jasper Ἴασπις ἀερόεσσα. Pliny describes the Beryll in general to be (except in Colour) of the Nature of the Emerald, and says it was brought from the Indies. Their Beryll was what we now call the Aqua Marina, a beautiful transparent Gem of a bluish green; and there is absolutely no Stone which our Sapphire more: nearly resembles than this; and to which, if it were not allowed a particular generical Name of its own, it could more properly be referred: nor could there; I think, be otherwise conceived a better Name for it than such a one as would express, as this did, a transparent Stone of a [*]sky blue, and (except in Colour) of the Nature of the Emerald.
Our Sapphire is a very elegant, transparent in most Species of a beautiful blue, and aching to the Ruby in Hardness. It owes its Colour to Particles of Copper dissolved in some Mensftruum of an alkaline, Nature and, as more or less of this cupreous Matter has entered its original Composition, is of a deeper or paler blue, and in the entire Absence of it, perfectly colourless, and refembling a Diamond.
We have now among the Jewellers, four Species of this Gem: 1. The blue Oriental Sapphire. 2. The white Sapphire. 3. The Water Sapphire. 4. The Milk Sapphire; and beside these there is a fifth, of a bastard Kind, having a Tinge of green, the Sapphirus Subaviridis of Wallerius.
The first, or, fine blue Oriental Sapphires, are greatly superior to the Occidental, and are called, in regard to their deeper or paler Colour, Male and Female. We have them from the Island of Ceylon, and from Pegu, Bisnagar, Conanor, Calecut, and some other Parts of the East Indies.
The second is brought principally from the same Places, and is a true Sapphire, though wholly colourless, being of the same Hardness with the former, and equalling it in Splendor and Transparency.
The third is the Occidental Sapphire; these we have principally from Silesia and Bohemia. They are of different degrees of blue, but never are so well coloured as the Oriental, or nearly so hard; their conftituent Matter coming nearer the Texture of common Crystal than the gemmeous Substance of the true Sapphire.
The fourth, or Milk Sapphire, is the softest and least valuable of all; this is the Leuco-Sapphirus of Authors; it is brought from Silesia, Bohemia, and some other Places: It is transparent, and its Colour is that of Milk, with a slight Tinge of blue.
The greenish Sapphire is from Bohemia.
The Oriental Sapphire will lose its Colour in the Fire, without any Loss of its Splendor or Transparency; and is sometimes made by this means to counterfeit the Diamond; as the natural colourless Sapphire is also often made to do: but tho' these are both very beautiful Stones, they want much of the Hardness and Brilliancy of that Gem, and may always be easily discovered by a skilful Eye.
- ↑ The Emerald is a most beautiful Gem, transparent, and of a lively grass green, without the least Admixture of any other Colour. The Romans called this the Neronian or Domitianian Gem; the Persians and Indians call it Pachæ, and the Arabians, Zamarrut; from whence it is generally supposed the Word Smaragdus is derived; though, in my Opinion, there is much more Probability that that Word was from the Greek Verb σμαράσσω, luceo, or splendeo, as this Gem was ever in great Esteem for its particularly vivid Lustre. It has its Colour from some Particles of Copper dssolved in an acid Menstruum, mixed with it at its original Concretion; and it will lose it, and become colourless in the Fire like the Sapphire.
The Antients distinguished twelve Kinds of the Emerald, some of which seem, however, to have been rather Stones of the Prasius or Jasper Kind, as they talk of Emeralds which were not transparent, and of enormous Size; and others no more than coloured Crystals and Spars from Copper Mines; so that a more scientific Way of Writing would probably have much curtailed the List.
The present great Distinction is into Oriental and Occidental; the former are excessively hard, of a lively Colour, and equally beautiful in all Lights. These are of no determinate Figure, but generally approaching to a round or oval, the largest of them seldom coming up to the Size of a Hazel Nut. These are now become very scarce, and what we have among the Jewellers may much better be distinguished into the American and European. Of these the American are greatly superior to the others both in Hardness and Lustre, and are indeed to the European, what in most other Gems the Oriental are to the Occidental. They are found in many Parts of South America, principally in Peru. They are often very elegant and beautiful Stones, and sometimes not inferior to the Oriental in Colour. They exceed all other Emeralds in Size, some of them having been found of two Inches Diameter. Nay, there are Accounts of much larger.
The European are found in Germany, Italy, Englend, Ireland[B 3], and some other Places. They are the least valuable Kind, and are not only inferior to the others in Hardness, Colour, and Transparency, but also in Size.
The true Oriental Emerald is of the same Hardness with the Sapphire: the American Emeralds are very different in this respect, and really are of different Kinds; some of them coming very near the Hardness of the Oriental, and others little exceeding that of common Crystal; the European in general are of this last Texture also, and, determinately speaking, are rather coloured Crystals than real Emeralds.
The Property of the Emerald, of assimilating Water to its Colour, here commemorated by this Author, has much puzzled those who have written on these Subjects since; they have none of them been able to find it in the Emerald, and that for this plain Reason, that they have all looked for what the Author never meant: They expected to find, that the Emerald would impart a Tincture or lasting Colour to Water, by being infused in it, as vegetable Subftances, &c. do; whereas Theophrastus means no more, than that its Radiations will tinge Water, if it be made the Medium through which they pass, with their own Colour. This had before been observed of it in regard to the Air, and it has been said, [B 4]Inficere circa se repercussum aërem. Our Author observes, that it will do the same in Water; and, according to its Size and Goodness, diffuse a Greenness through that also, if laid in it.
- ↑ There are, beside what is here related, many other Accounts of Emeralds of an enormous Size, though none so astonishingly incredible as this: All these I imagine to be either absolutely false; Descriptions of Things which never had Being: Or erroneous; Accounts of Things which really have been, but have been misrepresented through Ignorance or otherwise in the relating. Of this last Kind I imagine the Ægyptian Account to be, and believe that there really were Stones of these Shapes and Sizes among them; but that they were not Emeralds, but of some other beautiful green Stone, of the Jasper or some like Kind.
The Antients, in their Accounts of the Emerald, we find, have distinguished three Kinds of their twelve, as much superior to the others; these were,
1. The Scythian, which greatly excelled all the other Kinds, and of which Pliny observes, that quantum Smaragdi a gemmis distant, tantum Scythici a cæteris Smaragdis. The Emerald in general was sometimes, from the particular Excellence of those of this Country, called the Scythian Gem, ἡ Σκυθὶς by the Greeks, and Scythis by the Latins.
2. The Bactrian, which nearly approached to the Scythian in Colour and Hardness, but was always small. And
3. The Ægyptian, which was dug in the Mountains about Coptos. These were sometimes of considerable Size, but of a muddy Colour, and wanted the vivid Lustre of the two former Kinds,
These were the Characters of the three finest Species of the Emerald of the Antients; the other nine were, the Cyprian, the Æthiopian, the Herminian, the Persian, the Attic, the Median, the Carthaginian, or, according to some of the Critics, Calchedonian, for they imagine the Word is mis-spelt Carchedonii for Chalcedonii, the Arabian, called Cholus, and the Laconic. These were all Emeralds of a Iower Class than the three first named; they were in general found in and about Copper Mines, and were many of them very little deserving the Name of the Emeralds: They differed in their Degrees of Colour, Hardness, Lustre, and Transparency, and the Persian, in particular, was not pellucid. To these Species of the Emerald, Pliny observes, they added the Tanos, a Gem brought from Persia, of an unpleasing Green, and foul within. From his Manner of mentioning this not among, but after the Species of the Emerald, and saying that others gave it a Place among them, it is evident that he did not allow it to be a genuine Emerald.
- ↑ In the old Editions of this Author there was a small Lacuna after τῶν δὲ, at the End of which was ἀνῶν, the End of the Word wanting. This Defect had been in some of the more modern Editions, filled up only with the Letter T, and the Word made Τανῶν; but after Editors, dissatisfied with this, and observing that the Author afterwards mentions the Bactrian Emerals, refined upon the former way of filling the Lacuna with a single Letter, and made it Βακτριανῶν in which Manner it is now generally received by the Critics, and stands in almost all Editions: I have, however, brought it back to the old Τανῶν again: And this, from what I have to offer in defence of it, I believe cannot but be owned to have been evidently the original Reading. In this I am sensible I dissent from the generality of Critics; and, as in some other Places, even from Salmasius, the best, most diligent, and accurate of them all, and to whom I am much indebted in many Parts of this Work. But I had rather dissent from a thousand Critics than from Reason.
That Βακτριανῶν cannot have been the original Reading here is evident, from the Characteristics of that Species before named, the principal of which was its Smallness. Many of the other Emeralds were at Times found small, but the Bactrian always: its general Character was, that it was too small for engraving Seals on, and therefore only used for ornamenting Vessels and other Utensils of Gold. And it is certain, that if Theophrastus had known this Exception to its common Character, he would have named it hereafter, when describing it, and mentioning still its constant Smallness. But beside the Improbability of a large Pillar of a Gem usually too small for a Seal; why do those Gentlemen imagine Theophrastus, who we shall find hereafter was well acquainted with the Stones of this Class, should suspect the Bactrian Emerald to be a bastard Kind: It was well known to him to be a genuine Emerald, and was generally esteemed the second in Value: the best in the World except the Scythian.
That he could never, therefore, mean the Bactrian Emerald here, where he is describing a large, and, as he suspects, bastard Stone, is certain; and that he did mean the Tanus, I think, is, from his Account, almost equally clear. He is talking of the excessive Size of Emeralds; and after having mentioned two Accounts, neither of which, he tacitly declares, he can believe, he here adds a third, the Truth of which he seems not to doubt, but suspects the Genuineness of the Stone. Pliny, we fee, is just of the same Opinion in regard to the Tanus; ranking it, according to the common Opinion, in the same Chapter with the Emeralds, but not allowing it a Place among them, according to his own Sentiments. That Author has generally copied closely from Theophrastus in Things of this Kind, and almost every where adopted his Opinions; 'tis highly probable, therefore, that he had read this Passage Passage with Τανῶν, and thence formed his Suspicions of its not deserving a Place among the genuine Emeralds. And to this it may be added, that Theophrastus, though very particular in his Accounts of the Emerald, and all its Kinds, has no where else mentioned this.
- ↑ After this mention of the Tanus, which the Author suspects to be a bastard Kind of Emerald, and which was brought from remote Places, he now gives the History of the Bastard Emerald in general; which he observes was common, and produced in Places more frequented. What the Antients knew by the Names of Bastard Gems, were Crystals from Mines, tinged with the Colours of the various precious Stones: and that by the same means, the Admixture of metalline Particles, at the Time of their original Concretion: These had therefore the Colour, and in some degree the Beauty of the Gems, but wanted their vivid Lustre and their Hardness. And thus the Bastard Emeralds here mentioned were many of them no more than common Crystal tinged by Particles of Copper dissolved in an Acid. But though this was the general and more determinate Sense of the Words Pseudo-Smaragdus, &c. yet they were often used in a laxer Sense, and applied to Substances of different kinds more essentially distinct from the Gem Class than these, only from their having some Resemblance, (perhaps in some Cases in little more than Colour) to the Gems from which they had the Credit to be named. And of this Kind, if I may be indulged in a random Guess, I should imagine this Tanus, to have been; which it is evident some had placed among the Emeralds, and of which this Author knew not whether he might not refer it to the Bastard Emerald; though most probably it was no more than a fine Jasper, ranked among these Gems by less intelligent People, from its having a good green Colour, and some degree of Diaphaneity; for I have seen Oriental Jaspers, which, though opake in the Mass, have been tolerably pellucid, and of a beautiful green, when cut into thin Plates.
The Places where these Bastard Emeralds were found, favour very much the general Account I have given of them. The Copper Mines of Cyprus could not but abound in Crystals tinged with the Matter of the Mine, and resembling Emeralds. And Pliny observes of the Carthaginian, that they were always bad, and that the Store of them failed when the Copper Mines there were exhausted. Copper seems, therefore, to have been essential to their Formation; and their want of Lustre and Hardness shews them not to haye been truly Gems, but, what I have before called them, coloured Crystals.
Salmasius is of opinion, that Καρχηδόνι here is an Error, and that the Word should be Χαλχηδόνι; and that the Island, the Name of which the Author has not mentioned, was Demonesus, in which there were antiently Copper Mines.
Others are for preserving the Word as it stands, and suppose the Island to be Cothon or Coton, mentioned by Strabo, and placed over against Carthage. I have every where paid great Deference to that excellent Critic's Opinions; but in this cannot agree with him, because if this be an Error in the Copies of this Author, it is also to be amended in Aristotle, Pliny, and the rest of the Antients, who all have it Carchedonius, not Chalcedonius: and I see no Reason why we should doubt but that there may have been Copper Mines in Cothon, though exhausted or lost many Ages since. There are so many Passages in the Antients, where these Alterations are absolutely necessary, that a Commentator who wishes the World to have any Opinion of the Certainty of what they have left us, ought to be very careful how he adds to the Number without apparent Necessity.
- ↑ These were the Emeralds which in after Times were distinguished into two Kinds, and made two of the twelve Species they reckoned of this Gem, the Cyprian and Carthaginian; but it is evident from this Author's Account, that they were really no genuine Emeralds, but are two of the Kinds which a more scientific way of writing would have struck off from that List. Pliny accounting them Emeralds, we see, says they were always bad; and Theophrastus tells us, they served as Chrysocolla, for the soldering of Gold: and that some were of an Opinion, which it is easy to see he himself also favours, that they were of the Chrysocolla Kind; for he adds, they were evidently of the same Colour. This Opinion was unquestionably very just, and these Emeralds, as they were called, were no other than a larger, clearer, and purer Kind of Chrysocolla, differing from the common Chrysocolla of those Times in nothing but that they were of a brighter Colour and purer Texture, from there having been less of terrestrial or other heterogene Matter, assumed into them at their original Formation. Their answering the Purposes of Chrysocolla in soldering Gold, is alone a sufficient Proof of the Truth of this, for had they been real Emeralds, or any thing else truly of the Gem Kind, they never could have served for such a Use.
- ↑ The preceding Account of the Cyprian Emeralds must appear very strange to any one who imagines the Chrysocolla of the Moderns to be the Substance with which I here class those supposed Gems: but it is to be observed, that the Chrysocolla of the Antients here mentioned, and meant in that Account, was a Substance very different from, and indeed not at all resembling what is at present known by that Name.
Our Borax, which we call Chrysocolla for the same Reason which obtained the original Chrysocolla its Name; its Use in soldering Gold; is a Substance which resembles that of the Antients in no one thing but that Property; and is a Salt, made by the Evaporation of an ill-tasted and foul Water, of which there are Springs in Persia, Muscovy, and Tartary.
The Chrysocolla of this Author, and of the Antients, was a sparry Matter, of a beautiful green Colour, found in Copper Mines; or if green Colour, found in Copper Mines; or if in those of other Metals, no where but where there was an Admixture of Copper with the Metal of the Mine. It owed its Colour, as the green Crystals and Emeralds do, to that Metal, and was generally found in form of Sand; but if embodied in Masses of other Matter, was always separable by washing or other Means; and when separated, appeared loose and in the same Form. It was in different Places of different degrees of Colour, but the deeper coloured, and such as resembled the Emerald, was the most esteemed. It is described by Dioscorides and Pliny to be coloris herbæ segetis læte virentis, and porracei coloris; which is exactly what the Greeks called πράσινος. And Disscorides, in another Place, says, the best Chrysocolla was that which was κατακόρως πρασίζουσαν, satiatè porraceum. The Chrysocolla of the Antients was therefore very different from that of the Moderns: and was what, in a purer State, and larger Size, might in those Times very naturally be, and really was, accounted a Species of the Emerald.
- ↑ The Jasper is often the Matrix of the Prasius, and that of the Emerald: this latter is often called the Root or Mother of the Emerald, as that Gem is sometimes found adhering to it: And, indeed, there are often Parts of the Prasius, which, when cut, are not distinguishable from genuine Emeralds. The Jasper itself also often emulates the Colour and Appearance of the Prasius and Emerald. Indeed when we consider what has already been observed, in regard to the original Formation of Gems, we cannot wonder if they are often found degenerating in Appearance, or improving into, and much oftener affixed upon, or in some measure blended with the Substance of one another, What the particular Stone here mentioned by the Author was, it is not easy to ascertain; perhaps some Stone, which they improperly reckoned among the Emeralds; perhaps a Prasius, clearer than ordinary, affixed to a Jasper, as it frequently is, as well as to Crystals and other Substances; perhaps no more than a Jasper, finer than ordinary at one End; for it was often found in those Times green and pellucid; viret & sæpe translucet Jaspis, says Pliny, l. 38. c. 9. and possibly a true genuine Emerald affixed to it, as often to the Prasius, and affixed to, or immersed in others: But, whatever it was, it is certain, from the present more rational System of the Origin of the Gem Class, that it had been in this mixed State from the Time of its original Concretion; and would assuredly have for ever continued so: there being no Agent in nature of Power to have changed the Jasper Part into the Nature of the other.
The medicinal Virtues of the Emerald, according to the Antients, were so many, that, to look over their Accounts of them, one would imagine it deserved even more Esteem as a Medicine than as a Gem: They accounted it a certain Remedy, taken internally in Powder, for Poisons, and the Bites of venomous Beasts, for Fluxes of the Belly, the Plague, and pestilential Fevers, Hæmorrhages, and Dysenteries; the Dose was from four to ten Grains. Externally worn as an Amulet, they esteemed it a certain Remedy for Epilepsies, and imagined it had the Power of easing Terrors, and driving away evil Spirits; tied to the Belly or Thigh of Women with child, they attributed to it the Virtues of the Eagle-stone, of staying or forwarding Delivery: and thought it an infallible Preservative of Chastity; to the Violations of which it had that innate Abhorrence, that if but worn on the Finger in a Ring, it flew to pieces on the committing them.
It may not be amiss to have thus once given an Account of the Virtues the Antients attributed to Gems: for they had almost as large a List for every Kind as this. The greatest part of these cannot but be seen at first view to be altogether imaginary; and as to the Virtues of the Gems in general, it is now the reigning Opinion, that they are nearly all so, their greatest Friends allowing them no other than those of the common Crystal. However, whether the metalline Particles, to which they owe their Colours, are, in either Quantity or Quality, in Condition to have any Effect in the Body, is a Matter worthy a strict and regular Trial; and that would at once decide the Question between us and the Antients, and shew whether we have been too rash, or they too superstitious.
- ↑ There has been more Confusion and Error about the Lapis Lyncurius of the Antients, than about any other Substance in the whole fossile Kingdom. What I have to offer in regard to it, is very different from the generally received Opinions: these are, however, first to be examined; for if they are right, this has no Title to be heard.
The first and most generally received is, that it was what we now call the Belemnites: This is the Opinion of Woodward, &c. &c. &c. how true it may be is to be examined from their Accounts; and as they are, most of them, only Copies, and those often erroneous ones, of this Author, he is, where his Descriptions are long enough, always first to be consulted, and most relied on; and from his Words I venture to pronounce it evident, that the Lapis Lyncurius was not the Belemnites. He first says, it was fit for engraving Seals on; which every one who ever saw a Belemnites must pronounce impossibie to have been meant of it; its Structure rendering it the most improper Substance imaginable for such Uses. And next, that it was of a very solid Texture, like that of the Stones or Gems: the first Sight of a Belemnites must also prove, that this was not meant of it; for it is not of a solid Texture, nor of a Grain, as we call it, any way resembling that of a Stone, but composed of a number of transverse Striæ; and of the Texture, specific Gravity, and Hardness of Talk, which could never give it a Title to what our Author says of the Lyncurius; that it was not only hard and solid, but ϛερεωτάτη, extremely so. Hence, I presume, I may first venture to pronounce this, which is the common Opinion, evidently erroneous, and that the Lapis Lyncurius of the Antients was not the Belemnites.
The few who dissent from this Opinion, of the Number of whom are Geoffray, Gesner[B 5] &c. hold, that the Lapis Lyncurius of the Antients was no other than Amber. This is the second and only other Opinion worth naming; and the Favourers of it bring many Passages from the Copiers of the Antients, to confirm it: All which serve to prove what I have before observed, that many quote the Antients who have never read them; and shew how useful, and, indeed, absolutely necessary, a correct Edition of this Work of our Author is, in Researches of this kind. This Opinion is even more easily than the other proved erroneous from the Words of Theophrastus; who not only compares the Lyncurius, in some of its Properties, to Amber, which, as I have before observed in a parallel Case in the Note on the Sapphire, is sufficient Proof, that they cannot be the same: as no body would ever think of comparing a Thing to itself: But after having gone through a compleat Description of the Lyncurius, according to the received, though erroneous, Opinion of those Times, of its being produced from the Urine of the Lynx; he begins a separate Account of Amber under its own proper Name; and shews he was well acquainted with its Nature and Properties, and knew it to be a native Fossile. Hence it is therefore also evident, that the Lapis Lyncurius was not Amber, and that the generally received Opinions of it are both evidently erroneous. That such as had not read the Antients themselves should fall into Errors of this kind, from the Obscurity and Confusion of those who copied from them, we cannot wonder. But here it may not be amiss to observe, that it is not the Antients themselves, but these Copiers and Quoters of them, who are generally obscure. Epiphanius, who was better acquainted with them, has made a different Guess, and is, indeed, the first Author who has had the least Thought of what I shall attempt to prove to be evidently the Truth in regard to this Stone.
What it is not, has been sufficiently proved. It remains to enquire, what it really is. The Way to judge of this is, to consider what the Antients have left us about it: What Theophrastus says we have before us. That it was of a stony Texture is plain from his Account, and may be confirmed from all those who wrote more determinately; they have always called it, λιθος λαγγόυριος. Epiphanius has, εὕρομεν δὲ λαγγόυριον ὅυτω καλόυμενον λίθον. And Pliny, l. 8. c. 38. Lyncum humor ita redditus, ubi gignuntur; glaciatur arescitque in Gemmas Carbunculis similes, & igneo colore fulgentes Lyncurium vocatas. Can any one imagine this a Description of a Belemnites? All that we find in the Antients about it, in short, is of this Kind, and determines the Lapis Lyncurius to have been a transparent Gem, of no determinate Shape, and of a yellowish red or flame Colour, sometimes paler, and sometimes deeper; which distinguished it into Male and Female; as we shall see hereafter in this Author; and of a Texture fit for engraving on. Had the Antients meant to have deseribed our Belemnites, they would not only not have named any one of these Characters, but would certainly have described its Shape, which is the most striking, obvious, and remarkable thing about it. We are therefore to seek for some Stone better answering this Description; and this we find, even to the utmost Exactness, in the Gem which we now call the Hyacinth, which it is also evident they have never described under any other Name but this, (for what they called the Hyacinth, was a Stone of a very different Sort, and reckoned by us either among the Garnets or Amethysts) and which it is not easy to conceive how they could better or more exactly have described, than they have in their Accounts of the Lyncurius. I have before observed, that Theophrastus mentions more than one Species of it, and we at present know three. Pliny seems, in the Passage I have quoted from him, to have meant that beautiful Species of it which we call the Hyacintha la bella, a Gem in great Esteem, of a flame Colour with an Admixture of a deep Red, but without any Tendency to Blackness. These we have from Cambaia, and other Parts of the East Indies, and sometimes from Bohemia, but not so hard or beautiful as the Oriental. Our second Kind are the saffron-coloured; these are next in Esteem after the La Bella, and are from the same Places. The third are the amber-coloured; these have no mixture of red; these were the female Lyncuria of the Antients, and are the least esteemed of all: They are found in Silesa, Bohemia, Spain, and Italy.
The candid and excellent Dr. Watson has given many Reasons for supposing the Antients to have been acquainted with our Tourmaline, and to have known that Stone by the Name of Lapis Lyncurius. These are Fields of Conjecture, open to all who rouse the learned Quarry; and it is with a great deal of Pleasure I have read those Observations of my learned Friend: perhaps a great deal may be said to shew they do not disagree with my own. For thus much is certain, that the Hyacinth, which I understand here to be alluded to, has an electric Power.
As to the Stone Æpinus, and others, used in their Experiments, and called the Tourmaline; and which their Authority has fixed as the Tourmaline to this Day; that is a peculiar Species of Garnet, differing in every essential Character from the other Garnets. It is a prism of nine Sides, with two trihaedral Pyramids. Its Colour is purple, not fiery red, as the πυῤῥα of Theophrastus must compel us to believe the Lyncurius to be; nor have we yet seen of it with those particular degrees of fainter and fuller Colour, which would best answer the antique Lyncurius. I therefore fear the Lapis Electricus of the Berlin Memoir, &c. is not the Lyucurius: but I am very confident that the Hyacinth has all the same Qualities.
- ↑ This is much to the Honour of Theophrastus. I have before had Occasion to observe, that in departing from the Opinions of this Author, After-ages became more and more ignorant, their Systems erroneous, and their Accounts full of Confusion and Obscurity; till in some late Ages we have been at the pains of unlearning what our Forefathers had been taught by them, and now have brought ourselves to Systems of real Knowledge, by closer Observations of Nature. In many Cases, we find all that we have been studying for is to know just what we might have learnt from the Works of this Author alone. Of this I have before given some Instances; and the Sentence before us, is another very remarkable one: That Amber is a Stone, or native Fossile, the best of the modern Writers seem as certain, as that Gems, Rocks, or Minerals are so. It has, however, for many Ages, been judged by some, to be of a vegetable, and by others an animal, nature. And a thousand idle and incoherent Systems have been received as to its Formation: Dioscorides thought it an Exsudation of the black Poplar; and Pliny, of the Pine; and others, the Fat or Semen of Whales. And it is but of late, that the World has been again brought into the Opinion, that it is, as this Author esteemed it, a mere native Fossile. It is of various Colours, white, brown, and yellow, and is found in Masses of different Shapes and Sizes, on the Shores, in many Parts of the World, particularly in Prussia; but where-ever it is found on the Shores, it is also to be found, if carefully fought for, in the neighbouring Cliffs, the Sea having had no Share in bringing it to light; but that it has, in Storms and high Tides, wash'd it out of the Strata of those Cliffs, and cleaned and rounded it at the Edges, by constantly tossing it about; and rubbing it against harder Substances. Amber is naturally invested with a Crust, as the Flints and other natural fossile Nodules are; it is found in this State, in digging, in Prussia, Pomerania, and other Places, and is called Rock Amber. When it has been washed out of its native Place by the Sea, and divested of this Crust, it is called Wash'd Amber, or Smocth Amber. We have of both these Kinds in England; the rough is found in digging to considerable Depths in Clay, but is commonly of an ill Colour, and impregnated with the vitriolic Salts, with which almost all our Clay-pits abound; and this in such a degree, as often to crumble and fall to pieces, when it has been some time exposed to the Air: The other, or Wash'd Amber, we have on many of our Shores, particularly the Northern; and that sometimes not inferior to the finest of the Prussian. Beside the Variety of natural Colours in Amber, of which, beside the common pale yellow, we see white, orange, brown, and grey; there are certain Cabinets which now boast, red, purple, and green Amber; but I think I am warranted to say, that these, as well as the fine pale striated Amber, are made such by art: there are some Polish Jews who have this secret, and who keep it carefully to themselves.
- ↑ The Author takes occasion here, among the Stones endued with an attractive Quality, to mention the Loadstone, the most known and most powerful of them all. The antient Greeks called this, Ἡράκλεια λίθος, and the later, Μαγνῆτις λίθος. It has since been by some improperly called, instead of Heraclea, Herculea, as if it had obtained its Name from Hercules; whereas it had it from Heraclea, a City of Lydia, near which it was found in great abundance. Κέκληται δὲ οὗτος ἀπὸ τῆς Ἡρακλείας τἤς ἐν Λυδία πόλεως, says Hesychius. This, therefore, was its original Name among the antient Greeks, and indeed its only Name; for the Word Magnetis, which was also in common Use among them, signified a quite different Substance: Their Μαγνῆτις λίθος was a white silvery-looking Stone, with no Power of Attraction, and in frequent Use for turning into Vessels of many kinds, as this Author observes in another Place. It was a talcy Stone, of the Ollaris kind; (see Fossils Arrang'd, p. 27,) but not exactly the same with any we know at present. The later Greeks calling the Loadstone by the same Name, which both had from Magnesia in Lydia; the Place where they were found, has occasioned almost endless Errors in the less cautious Writers since. The Loadstone is a ferrugineous Substance, found in many Parts of the World, and in Masses of different Size: It is commonly met with in or about Iron Mines, and among ferrugineougs Matter. We have them from most Parts of the World, and there are very good ones found in England: Many have been picked up in Devonshire and the neighbouring Counties, as well as other Parts of the Kingdom; and I not long since found a Fragment of one, which will take up a small Needle, within two Miles of London.
- ↑ The Hyaloides has been by different Authors supposed to be the Asteria, the Iris, the Lapis Specularis, and the Diamond; all which seem very random Guesses, and liable to Objections not to be surmounted. The Stone, I think, appears rather to be the Astrios of Pliny, which he describes to be a fine white or colourless Gem, approaching to the Nature of Crystal, and brought from the Indies: His Words are, having been speaking of the Asteria, Similiter candida est, quæ vocatur Astrios, crystalle propinquans, in India nascens, & in Pallenes Littoribus. Intus a centro ceu stella lucet fulgore Lunæ Plenæ: Quidam causam nominis reddunt quòd Astris opposita fulgorem rapiat, & regerat; optimam in Carimania gigni nullamque minus obnoxiam vitio, l. 37. c. 9. And Stones of this Kind have of later Years been found near the River of the Amazons in America, and taken for Diamonds.
- ↑ The Omphax was most probably the Beryllus Oleaginus of Pliny; which, from what is left us about it, appears to have but little deserved to be ranked among the Beryls, and seems much more properly distinguished by a particular Name, as this Author has allowed it.
- ↑ Crystal is the most known and most common of all this Class of Stones. Our Lapidaries distinguish it into two Kinds, the Spring Crystal; and Pebble Crystal. The first is found in the perpendicular Fissures of Strata, commonly in Form of an hexangular Column, adhering to the Matter of the Stratum at its Base, and terminating at its other End in a Point. The other is found lodged at random, in the stony or earthy Strata, or loose among Gravel, and is of no certain or determinate Shape or Size, but resembles the common Flints or Pebbles in Form.
There are, beside these, regular and hexangular Crystals, found also lodged in the Strata, sometimes pointed at both Ends, sometimes covering the external Surface of small roundish Nodules, and sometimes shot all over the Inside, of hollow ones of various Sizes: These last are called the echinated and concave crystalline Balls; and the former the double-pointed Crystal, Crystallus in acumen utrinque definens. The Pebble Crystals of England are often of very considerable Hardness; and some have been found here which the Lapidaries have said approached to the white Sapphire. The pointed and hexangular are what Authors have called Iris's and Pseudo-adamantes. The Antients were of opinion, that Crystal was only Water congealed in long tract of Time, into an Ice, more durable than the common. And Pliny thought it was no where to be found but in excessively cold Regions; but we are now very certain, that it is even in the hottest. As to the various Forms of Crystal, they will be no where so well known, as from the Crystallographie of the great and incomparable De L'isle.
- ↑ The Amethyst of the Antients was the same with the Gem known yet by that Name: It is a very elegant Stone, of a purple or violet Colour, in different Degrees of Deepness. It is found both in the Fissures, and lodged among the Matter of the Strata; and fometimes, like common Crystal, in concave Balls, resembling the Ætitæ. It owes its Colour to Iron: And common Crystal and Spar are often found in and about Mines of that Metal, tinged in different Degrees to a Resemblance of it. The Antients reckoned five Species of the Amethyst, differing in Degrees of Colour; and we have at least as many among the Jewellers at present, though they are not at the pains to distinguish them by particular Names; they divide them in general into Oriental and Occidental: The former are very scarce, but of great Hardness, Lustre, and Beauty; the latter are had from many Places,
particularly Saxony, Germany, and Bohemia: They are often as finely coloured as the Oriental, but are soft. In England we also sometimes find them very beautiful, and of tolerable Hardness.
The Amethyst loses its Colour in the Fire, like the Sapphire and Emerald: The Oriental Kind, divested of its Colour by this Means, comes out with the true Lustre and Water of the Diamond; and is so nice a Counterfeit of it, that even a very expert Jeweller may be deceived by it.
- ↑ The Division of the Gems into Male and Female, from their deeper or paler Colour, I have before observed, is in a Manner general, and runs through almost the whole Class: The Male is always the deeper, the Female the paler; tho' both Kinds, as they are called, are often found in the same Stone. This Difference in the Degree of Colour, happens from the different Quantity of the metalline Particles, to which they all owe their Colours, as mixed with them at their original Formation: And I make no doubt, but that there are some of all the Kinds perfectly colourless, if we were enough acquainted with their exact Texture and Degree of Hardnes to be able to distinguish them by it. If we were, we should as surely find white Emeralds, and white Amethysts, as white Sapphires; there being scarce any of the coloured Gems of which we do not see the Male and Female, as they are called; and of which some Specimens of the Female are not found nearly as colourless as Crystal.
- ↑ The Carnelian and Lapis Lyncurius have been spoken of already. The Gem which the Antients called Cyanus, is what we now know by the Name of Lapis Lazuli; a Stone common among us in the Tops of Snuff-boxes and other Toys; and of which the glorious blue Colour, called Ultramarine by the Painters, is made. This has also been already treated of occasionally in the Notes on the Sapphire. To what is there said, it may be not improper to add, that it is a true Copper Ore, generally yielding about ⅛ of that Metal, and commonly a little Silver: It is of two Kinds, the Oriental, and German; the former is from Asia, Africa, and the East Indies; the Colour produced from this is not subject to Injuries, from Time or any other Accidents: The German is found not only in the Kingdom whose Name it bears, but in Spain, Italy, and Saxony also; in Mines of different Metals, particularly of Copper. The Colour made from this is subject to Injuries from many Accidents, and in Time usually turns green. The Stone, whereever found, is generally of the same Figure and Complexion, excepting, that the Oriental is harder than the other Kinds. It is composed always of three Substances, with which there is sometimes mixed a fourth, a Kind of Marchasite, of a shining yellow Colour, and flying off in the Calcination with a sulphureous Smell, like that of the common Pyritæ; the other three Substances, of which it is constantly composed, are hard, fine crystalline Matter, saturated with Particles of Copper, and by them stained to a beautiful deep blue: This is what may be called the Basis, and is variegated with a white crystalline Matter, and a yellow Talc of the foliaceous Kind; but the Flakes of it are so small, that the Whole appears in the Form of a Powder.
- ↑ The Oynx is a semi-pellucid Stone, of a fine flinty Texture, taking an excellent Polish, and is strictly of the Flint Class. I have before observed, in the Note on the Alabaster, that that Stone had, from its similar Use among the Antients, also the Name of this Gem; and that great Errors had been occasioned, by later Authors not understanding always which of the two they meant. But this is not all the Confusion there has been in regard to this Stone; for the Antients have, many of them, described it so loosely and indeterminately, that it is scarce possible, from their Writings, to fix any Characteristic, or say determinately what their Onyx was: And we find, in consequence of this, many different Stones described as Onyxes by the Writers since. It is to the Honour of Theophrastus, however, to be observed, that he has strictly and exactly determined what this Stone was; and that if the late Writers had consulted him, instead of being led into a thousand Mazes by the less scientific Authors since, they would never have described Carnelians, and a multitude of other different Stones, under this Name; but have known, that the Onyx was as much a distinct Stone with him, as the Emerald or the Amethyst, and as different from many of those they have described under its Name, as they from one another.
From his Account we are to determine, then, that the Onyx is a Stone of a whitish Ground, variegated with Zones of brown: And such are the true and genuine Onyxes we see at present. What may farther be added to its Description is, that its Ground is often of the Colour of the human Nail, bright and shining; the Zones are laid in perfect Regularity, and do not, according to the Judgment of the nicest Distinguishers of the present Times, exclude it from the Onyx Class, of whatsoever Colour they are, except red, in which case it takes the Name of Sardonyx: The Colour of the Ground, and Regularity of the Zones, are therefore the distinguishing Characteristics of this Stone: And in the last, particularly, it differs from the Agate, which often has the same Colours, but placed in irregular Clouds, Veins, or Spots.
We have our Onyxes both from the East and West Indies; as also from Spain, Italy, and Germany; and there have been tolerably fine ones found in England.
- ↑ The Agate is another of the semi-pellucid Stones of the Flint Class; it is nearly of the same Degree of Hardness with the Onyx; and differs from it, as was before observed, in the irregular and uncertain Manner of its Spots, Clouds, and Variegations, being placed. It has commonly a grey horny Ground; its Variegations are of different Colours, and often most beautifully disposed; representing sometimes, very exactly and elegantly, Trees, Shrubs, and Plants, Clouds, Rivers, and Forests; and sometimes Animals: There are Stories of very strange Representations on some of them; and, indeed, the beautiful Images we often now see upon some, may incline one to believe many of the strange Things we hear of them.
The Antients have distinguifhed Agates into many Species, to each of which they have given a Name, importing its Difference from the common Agate; whether it were in Colour, Figure, or Texture: From their, Colours, they called the red Hæmachates, the white Leucachates, and the plain yellowish, or wax-coloured, Cerachates. Those which approached to, or partook of the Nature of other Stones, they distinguished by Names compounded of their own generical Name, and that of the Stone they resembled or partook of: Thus that Species which seemed allied to the Jaspers they called Jasp-Achates; and that which partook of the Nature of the Carnelian, Sard-Achates; and those which had the Resemblance of Trees and Shrubs on them, they called, for that Reason, Dendrachates: These are what our Jewellers at this Time call Mocho-Stones, but improperly; for they are not the Product of that Kingdom, but are only used to be brought from other Countries, and shipped there for the Use of our Merchants.
Others they have named idly from their imaginary Virtues; as that Kind which they supposed had the Power of conquering the Rage of Lions, and other wild Beasts, they called therefore Λεοντοσέρες, which some have imperfectly translated Leonina only, and suppose the Stone to have been so named, from its being of the Colour of a Lion's Skin: How much they were mistaken, we may know from this remarkable Description of it in so old an Author as Orpheus:
Ἀλλ᾿ οὗτος πάντων προφερέϛατος, εἴκέ μιν εὕροις
Εἷδος ἔχοντα δαφοινὸν ἁμαιμακέτοιο δράκοντος,
Τῷ καί μιν προτέροισι λεοντοσέρην ὀνομῇναι
Ἥνδανεν ἡμιθέοισι, κατάϛικτον σπιλάδεσσι
Πυρσαῖσι λευκαῖς τε, μελαινομέναις χλοεραῖς τε.Pliny seems not to have perfectly understood the History of this Species; as he is too often also in other Places guilty of Errors, in regard to the Greek Authors from whom he takes his Accounts of Things. Indeed it seems much to be questioned, whether the Stone itself be not as much the Product of Imagination, as the Virtues ascribed to it: However, as there was so evident a Proof as this, of its having obtained its Name from its supposed Virtues, because it was πάντων προφερέϛατος; not its Colour; I could not omit giving it a Place, to ascertain the original Meaning of a Name so much misunderstood.
The Agate was first discovered in the River Achate, from which, as our Author observes, it had its Name, but has since been found to be the Product of almost every Nation upon Earth. The finest in the World are those of the East Indies: It is found also in great Plenty in Italy, Spain, and Germany, where there are sometimes also very elegant ones; England is not without them: In general, the English are not good; but some few of them have been found little inferior to the finest.
- ↑ Lampsacus was a City of Asia, near the Hellespont, in the Neighbourhood of which there were Mines worked for Gold, Silver, and Copper. What the Gem was, here mentioned by the Author, there is no determining; but in all Probability, from its having a Place so near the Agates, it was a more than ordinarily beautiful Stone of that Kind.
- ↑ The Arcadian Carbuncles of the Antients, were of the Garnet kind, but so deep coloured, that they were little esteemed; and those of other Countries, which were of the same kind, but little regarded among them. It appears to me, that our Tourmaline was known to them by the Name of an Arcadian Carbuncle.
- ↑ The Trœzenian I have before observed, in the Notes on the Anthrax, was what we call the Amandine, a Stone now little known or regarded. And the Corinthian seems to have been only a meaner and worse Kind of it: Toward the end. of the Description of this Species, after the Word πλὴν, there was a Lacuna, affording room for a Word of about three or four Syllables; it is here filled up from Salmasius, whose Motive for giving the Word λευκότερον was, that Pliny, who has copied this Passage from Theophrastus, shews, that he had read or understood it so; by giving pallidiores & candidiores for it. And it may be observed in general, that there is no better way of judging of the obscurer Passages of the Antients at this time, than by observing how they have understood one another.
- ↑ The Antients we find made great Distinction between the different Species of the Carbuncle; on some of which they set almost no Value; and others they esteemed at a very high Rate. This Author has very carefully and exactly distinguished and ascertained the Places of the one as well as the other.
The Carthaginian or Garamantine Carbuncle was, as I have observed in another Place, what we now call the Garnet, &c. This Place was so famous for it, that it was called by many the Carchedonius Lapis, Καρχηδόνιος λίθος.
Quo Carchedonios optas ignes lapideos
Nisi ut scintillent? Publ. Syr.That the Carthaginian and Garamantine Carbuncle were really the same Stone, is ascertained by Strabo, ἡ δὲ ὑπὲρ τῶν Γαιτούλων ἐϛὶν ἡ τῶν Γαραμάντων γῇ παράλληλος ἐκείνῃ, ὄθεν οἱ Καρχηδόνιοι κομίζονται λίθοι. And Epiphanius adds his Confirmation of this Place being famous for the Carbuncle, γίνεται δὲ ἐν Καρχηδόνι τῆς Λιβύης. Pliny, and other of the Antients, confirm also their being found in Egypt and Massila; and Salmasius has very judiciously rendered the last mentioned Place intelligible, by altering it from Ψηφὼ, as it always before was written, to Ψηβὼ, the Name of a Kingdom in the inland part of Æthiopia. It is to be observed, however, that the following Ages grew nicer in regard to their Gems; for two of the Kinds we find here placed among the more perfect and valuable, the Egyptian, and (according to the just mentioned Emendation of Ψηβὸς) Æthiopian, were even before the Days of Pliny, ranked among the meaner Kinds; Archelaus & in Ægypto circa Thebas nasci tradidit fragiles, venosas, morienti Carboni similes. And, Satyrus Æthiopicos dicit esse pingues lucemque non emittentes, aut fundentes, sed convoluto igne flagrantes. Lib. 37. c. 7.
- ↑ The Jasper and the Emerald in general have already been spoken of. The Bactrian Emeralds were allowed, as has been observed, the second place in Value: Our Author's Account of them, and the Place and Manner in which they were found, has been copied by most of the Writers after him, though all of them have not been careful enough to do him justice, by doing it correctly. It is evident, that Pliny rendered his κινꙋμένης τῆς ἄμμꙋ, tellure aperta, (though it is not exactly so printed in any of the Copies, but, tunc enim terta, terfa, or tellure internitent,) because Solinus and Isidorus have it, tunc enim detecto solo facillime internitent, and tunc etiam tellure deoperta intermicant; which shews that they had read it tellure aperta in him; however our later Copies may have deviated from the old ones. But the same Isidorus condemns Pliny in another part of this Sentence, by transcribing from him his noted Error, of rendering the τὰ λιθόκολλα of Theophrastus by colliguntur enim in commissuris saxorum: The Meaning of Theophrastus evidently is, that these Bactrian Emeralds were used for ornamenting Vessels of Gold, by being fixed in them in various Figures. That this was a common piece of Luxury among the Antients, and that Emeralds and Berylls, the only other green Gem, were mostly employed in it, as making the best Figure in Gold, is to be seen in many Passages of the Antients.
Gemmatuin Scythicis ut luceat ignibus aurum
Adspice quot digitos exuit iste calyx.Martial.& inæquales Beryllo
Virro tenet Phialas.
Juvenal.What the Author here means by εἰς τὰ λιθόκολλα, is evidently, that these Bactrian Emeralds, though very fine, were but small; and therefore principally used to stud and ornament Vessels of Gold. And this Pliny has so far misunderstood, that he has translated it, that they were found in the Commissuræ Saxorum. And as Errors never fail to be faithfully copied, and handed down to Posterity, this has been carefully delivered to us by every Author since; while Theophrastus, who never meant any such thing, or imagined there were any such things as Stones to be found in those Desarts, was either forgot, or accused of the Error.
- ↑ The Pearl was in great esteem among the Antients. It was by the Romans allowed the second Place among Jewels: and seems ever to have been a particular Favourite with the Ladies.
Pearls are produced in many kinds of Shell-fish; but the finest, and what are properly the genuine Pearl, are bred in the concha margaritifera plerisque, Berberis antiquis Indis dicts. List, Hist. Conch. Our Author seems to have been very well acquainted with the History of the Pearl; and, doubtleſs, means this very-Shell by his ὀστρείω τινί. Androsthenes also confirms its being this very Shell that the fine Oriental Pearls are found in, ἓν δὲ ἴδιον καλοῦσιν ἐκεῖνοι Βέρβερι, ἐξ ὧ ἡ μαργαρῖτις λίθος. I have ventured to add an ς to the Word παραπλησίῳ in the Greek Text, because the Sense and original Meaning of the Author seem to have been so. The Shell which produces the Pearl is not at all like the Pinna, and some have censured this Author for saying it was; which he seems never really to have done, but to have known the History of the Substance he is treating of much better; and to have said, as I have made it by the Addition of that single Letter, probably lost in some of the Copies, that the Pearl is produced in the Berberi, and in like manner in the Pinna marina; which it also was, and which the Antients: knew it was.
The Pearl is no more than a morbid Excrescence from the Animal in which it is found: it consists of several Laminæ laid closely round one another, as the Bezoar, the Calculi in human Bladders, and other animal Stones. When small, such are called Seed-pearls, and when larger than ordinary, Uniones. Our Jewellers distinguish them into Oriental and Occidental. They are found in many Places, as well as in different Shells. The finest in the World are those of the Persian Gulph: There are a great number found about Cape Comorin and the Island of Ceylon, but they are greatly inferior to the Persian. Very large ones have been found about Borneo, Sumatra, and the neighbouring Islands, but not of the fine Shape and Water of the Persian.
The Occidental have a milky Cast, and want the polished Gloss of the Oriental. They are very plentiful in many Parts of America; as also in France, Italy, and Scotland; and we meet with them every Day in our Oysters and Muscles here, but seldom of any great Beauty.
Some have been of Opinion, that they were bred singly, one only in a Shell; and that they thence had their Name Uniones; but this, is an Error, many being very frequently found together; nay, there are Accounts of one Shell producing 120.
- ↑ Fossile Ivory and Bones of Animals lodged long before in the Earth, are frequently dug up in all Parts of the World. These Substances have preserved their Texture, Solidity, and Colour, in different Degrees, according to the Nature of the Matter among which they have lain: Sometimes they are dug up firm, solid, and scarce altered; sometimes so rotten, as to crumble to pieces in handling; and sometimes stained to various Colours, from the dissolved Particles of metalline or mineral Matter among which they have been lodged.
Of this Kind is the Turquoise, generally esteemed and called a Stone, but, in reality, no other than the Bones and Teeth of Animals, accidentally lodged near Copper Mines, or Places where there is cupreous Matter in the Earth. This Metal, if dissolved by a proper acid Menstruum, makes the Bone a green Turquoise, of which there are some found in Germany and elsewhere: And if the cupreous Particles have been dissolved in a proper alcaline Menstruum, they convert the Bones or Teeth, into the Substance of which they penetrate, into the common blue Turquoise. This Colour it is sometimes found beautifully and equally tinged with all through; and sometimes only in Spots and Lines of a very deep Blue, but which the Assistance of Heat will diffuse through the whole Mass, and make it as beautifully palely, and uniformly blue, as that found naturally so.
The Word μέλανι in this Place has been always translated black; and Pliny copies it in that Sense from this Author; for he says, Theophrastus auctor est & ebur fossile candido & nigro colore inveniri. If we may be allowed to understand it as I have done, only in the very Sense in which he uses it in the next Line; and judge that he means by it no more than a deep Blue; as 'tis certain he there does, where he applies it to the Sapphire; for Nobody can imagine he intended to call that black; if we receive the Word, in this Sense, and determine that the Author means to say, that fossile Ivory was white variegated with blue; and remember what is just before observed of the Turquoises only spotted and veined with a very deep Blue, as those of France all are; and many of many other Places, till brought to the Fire; we shall understand this Passage, the Meaning of which has never yet been guess'd at, in a very clear and very particular Light: and find, that the Substance here described is the genuine rough Turquoise, which our Author has very properly called no other than fossile Ivory, as perhaps all he had seen was of Elephants Teeth; and seems very well acquainted with it in its rough State. Whether the manner of diffusing its Colour by Fire was known at that Time, is more than can now be positively determined: Most probably it was not, and they looked upon the native blue Turquoise, which they called Callais, as a different Substance.
That the System of the Turquoises owing their Colour to Copper dissolved in a proper Alcali, is just, I have this to prove; that by a similar Operation I have myself made Turquoises, many of which I have now by me, and which have been acknowledged true ones by our best Lapidaries.
- ↑ The Sapphire has been spoken of at large already; I shall only add here, that the Word μέλαινα in this Place evidently signifies not black, but deep blue, as I have understood it in the former Line. And that this Passage is a strong Confirmation, that the Sapphire and Cyanus are not the same Stone, since he here compares one of them to the other. And, as I have often had Occasion before to observe, we cannot suppose he would compare a Thing to itself.
- ↑ The Prasius is the Stone known by our Jewellers under the Name of the Root of the Emerald; and before mentioned in the Notes on that Gem.
It is a Gem of the lower Class, of an impure green, in which there is commonly some Tinge of yellow. The Antients distinguished it into three Kinds; the one of a plain yellowish green, the others variegated with white, and with red. We often see it now coloured from the other Gems or coloured Stones on which it is produced, but make no Distinctions from those Accidents.
We have, however, as the Antients had, three Kinds of it distinguished by Colour, though none of them variegated; they are, the deep green, the yellowish green, and the whitish yellow; the last has very little green in it, and more properly belongs to the Lapis Nephriticus Class, as being but semi-pellucid.
It is found in the East and West Indies, and in Germany, Silesia, Bohemia, and England; but is little valued any where.
Woodward errs in thinking our Jewellers call this the Smaragdo-Prasus: that and the Chrysoprasus are both, indeed, called Species of it, but are much superior to it in Beauty and Value. The Chrysoprasus is a Stone of greater Lustre and Hardness than the Prasius, and is in Colour of an equal Mixture of green and yellow. And the Smaragdo-Prasus, a beautiful Gem, of a grass green, with the slightest Cast imaginable of yellow.
The Distinctions between the Emerald, Prasus, Chrysoprasus, and Smaragdo-Prasus, are, indeed, very nice, but they are very just. The Antients, we find, were well acquainted with them; and some of our Lapidaries are very clear in them at this Time. As the History of Gems is at best a thing too full of Confusion and Uncertainty, we ought, of all things, to avoid adding to it, by losing more of the old Distinctions.
- ↑ The Hæmatites is an Iron Ore, and a very rich one, perhaps the richest of all; for there is some of it which contains more than half Iron. It is generally of a ferrugineous reddish Colour, very heavy, and in Texture resembling the fibrous Talcs. The Antients had five Kinds of it, some of which are now lost: The
Ethiopian, which was the most esteemed, and probably meant by the first Kind mentioned here, was of the same Nature with ours. The Xanthus or Xuthus, ξȣθὸς, here mentioned afterwards, was that which was afterwards called Elatites: It was naturally of a pale, yellowish Colour, but became red, as all ferrugineous Bodies do by burning.
Our Hæmatites is sometimes of a plain striated Texture, and sometimes has its Surface rising very beautifully into globular Tubera, or Inequalities, resembling Clusters of large Grapes. It is found in Spain, Italy, Germany, England, and elsewhere: That of our own Kingdom is very rich in Iron, some of it yielding 1220 of that Metal, and running into a malleable Iron on the first Fusion.
- ↑ The Nature and Origin of Coral has been as much contested as any one Point in natural Knowledge; the Moderns can neither agree with the Antients about it, nor with one another: And there are at this Time, among the Men of Eminence in these Studies, some who will have it to be of the vegetable, others of the mineral, and others of the animal Kingdom. It were easy to overthrow all that has been advanced, as to its belonging to the mineral Kingdom, but that there is not Room here for all one could wish to say. As no one, however, has been at more Pains to prove it of mineral Origin than our own Dr. Woodward, it may not be amiss here, in few Words, to defend Theophrastus's φύεται ἐν θαλάττῃ, against that Gentleman's Hypothesis: and shew, as it evidently is so, that Theophrastus was in the right, in determining that it was an organized Body; and consequently the Doctor mistaken, in imagining it to have been formed in the manner of Fossils. And this I promise myself may be done even from his own Account. It may be proper to premise here, that it was of absolute necessity to the supporting that Gentleman's System of the Solution of Fossils at the Deluge, that this should be proved to be one, because he gives it as a Certainty, that all the fossile Corals have been in a State of Solution; which, had they ever been of another Nature, they could not, according to his own System, have been. If his System be just in this Point, I have Proofs, that, whatever he might conclude from it, it really makes for the antient Opinion; for, whatever may have been the Case in regard to the fossile Corals in the Doctor's Cabinet, I have one which I very lately took up from 25 Feet deep in a Clay-pit in the Neighbourhood of London: Which shews evidently, that it never has been in a State of Solution, and must have been therefore, according to his own System, an organized Body; for there are Numbers of small Balani affixed on it, and that not immersed in, or laid on it in irregular and uncertain Postures (as must have been the Case, if they had accidentally been lodged in and on it at the Time of its concreting in the Waters of the Deluge) but fixed in the very Manner in which they are found when living and in their natural Posture: This it is impossible they should be, if ever they had been dislodged from it; as they must have been, if ever it had been in a State of Solution. Nor are we to imagine, that the fossile Corals have been in a State of Solution, because they have often very different Matter from the Coralline in their Constitution; nay, sometimes seem almost wholly composed of such: For we frequently find fossile Wood, which, according to that Gentleman's own System, never has been in a State of Solution, saturated in like manner with the Matter of the common Pyrites, and sometimes seeming wholly composed of it. And this very Specimen of Coral of mine, which, it is evident, never has been in a State of Solution, is yet almost wholly converted into an Agate.
To this it may be added, that after all the Pains that Gentleman has taken to prove that Corals are Fossils, and formed by mere Apposition of Corpuscles, not by Organization; his chemical Analysis of red Coral, has brought him to a Necessity of allowing, that there is something of another Nature in them; And how can he imagine this came there? When I can be informed how something of a vegetable or animal Nature can be produced otherwise than from Seed or Egg, I may come over to the Doctor's Opinion; that Corals have been formed by mere Apposition of Particles wash'd out of the neighbouring Rocks: But till then must believe, that no animal or vegetable Matter can be produced otherwise than by organized Growth: nor is there now the least Doubt that they are to be ranged in the animal Kingdom. Peyssonell, Jussieu, and our own acute and. excellent Ellis, have put, this beyond question.
It is matter of great concern to me, that I am obliged in this, and some other parts of this Work, to dissent from the Opinions of the Author above-mentioned, to whom the World owes more real and everlastingly true Discoveries in the History of Fossils, than to any one Man beside who ever wrote; and to whom I am myself so much indebted: in this very Work: But Truth is to be sought for at the Expence of the Opinions of all the Writers in the World; and as Dr. Woodward is an Author so much and so deservedly esteemed, where-ever he is in Errors, few would venture to believe him so, unless convinced of it, either by ocular Demonstration, or the apparent Testimony of the Antients. Where these have made against him, there, and there alone, I have ventured to dissent from him: and I cannot but observe, that he has, in this Case of the Corals, been guilty of that Precipitancy of which he so angrily accuses some other excellent Authors: And when he so severely censured in this matter, in which himself was in the wrong, a Gentleman to whom the World is very much indebted in things of this Kind, he should have considered that it might be his own Fate to be afterwards treated in the same manner; and remembered the excellent Spanish Proverb, which advises a Man who has Glass Windows never to throw Stones.
- ↑ The petrified Calamus Indicus of the Antients, was one of the starry-surfaced fossile Coralloids; and, indeed, was not named without some appearance of Reason: The Specimen I have of it, very prettily and exactly resembles that Body.
- ↑ The Gold and Silyer Ores are of so many Kinds, and such various Appearances, that it is an almost endless Scene of Variety that may be found in visiting the various Mines, or examining the Specimens from them. Gold, Woodward observes, is, more or less of it, incorporated with almost all kinds of terrestrial Bodies: And Silver I have seen in almost an infinite variety of Forms. That of Saxony is incorporated generally with Sulphur and Arsenick, and has from them an external Shew of Gold, for which Reason it is called there Rotgulden Ertz, that is, Red-golden-looking Ore: This is very heavy, and when broken is of a strong Smell.
Beside these, the common Marchasites and Pyritæ many of them hold Gold and Silver in small Quantities; and are of various Colours, and contain sulphureous, arsenical, and other different Matter, enough to give them both Smell and Weight, and sometimes both, to a very great Degree.
- ↑
The Κυανὸς or Cyanus here mentioned, is not the blue Gem before described under that Name, but the blue Colour used by Painters, and since called Lapis Armenus, by which Name alone it is now known. The Greeks called this and the Gem both by the common Name Κυανὸς Cyanus: They had no other Name for this, but generally took care to distinguish which they meant, by the Context. It is here evident by its Epithet αὐτοφυης, by way of distinion from the artificial Cæruleum used in Paintings; (for the Cyanus Gem, or Lapis Lazuli, cannot be supposed to have been so subject to be counterfeited) and its containing their Chrysocolla, which the Lapis Armenus always does, that the Paint, and not the Gem, was the Cyanus meant here. The Antients calling thefe two different Substances by the same Name, has, however, been the Occasion of innumerable Confusions and Misunderstandings of their Works; and that not only among the less careful of the Moderns, but even among some of their earliest Copiers: And we are not to wonder if many are at present misled, as it is now generally thought going very far back if we turn to Pliny; when we find that even Pliny, who has taken the greater Part of his History of Fossils from this Author, has in many Places evidently and notoriously misunderstood him. Of this we have an evident Instance in the present Case; for he has confounded the two Substances called by this Name, and said of the Gem Cyanus, what Theophrastus, from whom he translated it, says of the Paint; as I shall have Occasion to obsserve at large, when I come hereafter to the Passage from which Pliny translated it.
The Cyanus here meant, therefore, is the Lapis Armenus, called by the Germans, Bergblau, and by the French, Verd azur. It is a mixt earthy Substance, of a beautiful greenish Blue; and seems composed of arenaceous and ochreous Matter, tinged to that Colour by Particles of Copper, It was first found in Armenia, from whence it has its present Name, and used to be brought from thence; but has since been discovered in Germany, Bohemia, Saxony, and many other Places: Our own Kingdom produces it, and that as good as any in the World, but in what Quantity I cannot say. I remember to have seen it in the Fissures of Stone, among some of the Talcs, not far from Mountsorrel in Leicestershire, and have now some of it, which I brought thence.
- ↑ The Stone next mentioned, and said to resemble the Carbuncle, but to be heavier, was probably of the Cinnabar Kind, of which hereafter: Many Specimens of this Fossil I have seen of a very fine Texture, and beautiful Colour; and all of it has the other Quality here mentioned, Weight.
- ↑ Ochre and Reddle are Earths of the same Nature and Texture, and only differ in Colour; there are many Kinds of each, several of which will be spoken of hereafter: They are all of a fine argillaceous Texture, most of them easily crumbling to pieces, and staining the Fingers in handling. They are used in Medicine and by the Painters. The common yellow Ochre is a cheap and very useful Colour: And the common Reddle is often sold in the Druggists Shops either in its native State, if pale enough, as it sometimes is; or mixed with Whiting, under the Name of Bole Armeniac.
The Ochres all contain more or less Iron; for the yellow ones become red by burning.
- ↑ Sandarach and Orpiment are also two Substances of the same Nature and Texture, differing in Colour, like the Ochre and Reddle; and, in like manner, the yellow will become red by burning.
Orpiment is the Ἀῤῥενικὸν of the antient, and Ἀρσενικὸν of the later Greeks. The Arabians call it Zarnich Asfar: It is a very beautiful Substance, composed of large Flakes, resembling those of the Lapis Specularis, but of a glorious Yellow; very weighty, and sometimes holding a small Quantity of Gold.
There are, beside this fine Orpiment, two other less beautiful Kinds; the one composed of an impurer Substance, resembling common Sulphur, spangled all over with small Flakes of the fine foliaceous Kind; the other more impure than the last, and tinged of a paler or deeper Green in many Places, from Particles of Copper. These are what may be called the three different Kinds of this Fossil; but there are, beside these, almost endless Varieties of it, in regard to its deeper or paler Colour, and the extraneous Matters contained in it.
Yellow Orpiment burns to a Redness in the Fire, emitting a nauseous Smell; and this red Mass is sometimes called red Orpiment: But the genuine and natural red Orpiment is the Sandarach here mentioned; this the Arabians call Zarnich-Abmer; it is of the same Nature with the former, but generally in larger Masses, and not of that foliaceous Texture, but in more compact Glebes.
All the Kinds of Orpiment and Sandarach are found in the Mines of Gold, Silver, and Copper; and sometimes two or more of them mixed in the same Glebe. I have, from the Mines of Gosselear in Saxony, a most elegant Piece of the foliaceous Orpiment, which has two fine Veins of native Sandarach running across it: It was brought to me under the Name of a Gold Ore; and I believe really does contain a small Quantity of that Metal.
- ↑ This is a Doctrine well known to our Lapidaries, and without the Knowledge of which the Diamond, the first and finest of all Gems, never could have been worked into Form at all; for nothing will cut it but itself. Other Gems and Stones are either work'd with Diamond-powder, or with that of Emery, one of the hardest Substances in Nature, except the Diamond; and afterwards with Tripoly, and other softer Powders.
- ↑ The Magnet Gem, or Μαγνῆτις λιθος of the antient Greeks, I have before observed, was a Stone of an entirely different Nature from the Loadstone, which we now call the Magnet. The Stone here meant, was a very bright white Substance, so nearly resembling Silver in Appearance, that it was scarce, at first Sight, to be distinguished from it: It was found in large Masses, and was of a Texture easily to be wrought into any Shape or Figure. This made it in great Esteem among the Antients, and in constant Use, turned into Vessels of different Kinds. What Stone it was, is at present not to be certainly determined, farther than that it was of the Ollaris Kind; probably it may be now lost; at least among the Nations we have Commerce with.
What I have before observed of the Antients calling this silvery Stone the Magnet, and our Loadstone the Heraclius Lapis, is confirmed, in very plain Words, by Hesychius, Μαγνῆτις λίθος, αὕτη πλανῷ τὴν ὂψιν ἀργύρῳ ἐμφερὴς οὖσα, ἡ δὲ Ἡρακλεῶτις τὸν σίδηρον ἐπισπᾶται.
- ↑ This Stone was afterwards called Lapis Siphnius, from the Place where our Author observes it was found, which was an Island in the Ægean Sea, called by some Merope. What the Antients in general have left us about it beside, is, that it was of Strength to bear the Fire. And Vessels made of it, served, as those of Earthen-ware, for the common Offices of Boiling, &c. Pliny sums up their Accounts of it in these Words: In Siphno Lapis est qui cavatur, tornaturque in vasa coquendis cibis utilia, vel ad esculentorum usus: and a little afterwards, Sed in Siphnio singulare quod, excalfactus, oleo nigrescit durescitque, natura mollissimus. I have, among the Ollares, one of the coarse grey and black Kind; the Pierre Ollaire a gros Graines of Bomare; which becomes of a perfect black after it has been two or three Times in the Fire. Perhaps this is the very Stone which Pliny speaks of here. I had mine from Minorca.
- ↑ The Marbles, Alabasters, and most other Stone of Strata, are of the Number of those which we cut with blunt Iron, Instruments. But if we consider our Manner of performingthis, which probably is the same that was used in this Author’s Time, and is not, without the Assistance of Water and Sand, we shall find, that these are not properly to be divided from the Class. of those usually cut with other Stones; for, in reality, the Sand in this Case does more than the Iron, and is a similar Substance to the Powder of hard Stones used to Gems; tho' coarser; The Art of cutting and polishing the harder Gems with other Stones was known very early in the World: We have Accounts from some of the earliest Authors, of Fragments of Diamonds being set in a convenient Manner for handling, and made into Tools for the working on other Gems. Diamond-powder is the great Thing in Use with us on these Occasions, and next to it Emery; and Emery was also known to the Antients, and used by them on the same Occasions. Σμίρις λίθος ἐϛὶν ᾗ τὰς ψήφȣς οἱ δακτυλιογλύφοι σμήχȣσιι. Dioscorides. Σμίρις ἄμμȣ εἶδος, ᾗ σμήχονται σκληροὶ τῶν λίθων. Hesychius.
Cardanus imagines, but erroneously, that the Porus of the Antients was our Emery; or else, that our Emery was unknown to them; which is no less an Error: For it is evident, they were well acquainted with its Uses. And as to what he adds, of their working on Gems with the Porus, and Fragments of the Lapis Obsdianus, Salmasius, who had certainly read more than most Men, affirms, he never could find any Account of it among them. Pliny relates, indeed, that Fragments of the harder Kind of the Ostracites were used for this Purpose; lib. 37. c. 10. Ostracia seu Ostracites est testacea durior: altera Achatæ similis nisi quòd Achates politura pinguescit; duriori tanta inest vis ut aliæ gemmæ scalpantur fragmentis ejus. And that a Sand prepared from the Porus, was used for polishing Marble, but not Gems; Crassior enim harena laxioribus segmentis terit, & plus erodit marmoris, majusque opus scabritie polituræ relinguit. Rursus Thebeicia polituris accommodatur, & quæ fit e poro lapide aut e pumice. For poro lapide, many of the Copies have toro lapide, and duro lapide; but the concurrent Accounts of other of the Antients determine it to be this particular Stone that is meant. And the same Author expressly says, that the Obsidianus could not cut the true Gems, Obsidianæ fragmenta veras gemmas non scarifant.
- ↑
The Armenian Whetstones, Coticulæ of the Latins, and Ἀκόναι of the Greeks, were of a Stone of extreme Hardness; and, as we may learn from this Passage, of the same Nature with that, which they used for the working some of those Stones which Iron could not touch.
This Stone used for working on others they first had from Cyprus; and some of the antient Greeks called it Adamas, from its extreme Hardness; as they also did sometimes Iron, for the same Reason. This Manner of Writing has much misled their Copiers; and even Pliny, who, after having in one Place given the right Account of this Stone, and called it Cos, in another mistakes it for a Diamond, and calls it such. This was the Effect of his copying from various Authors in different Parts of his Work; and not seeing, in many Places, that they were describing only the same Substance under two different Names. This Cyprian Stone was long in Esteem, and served not only for polishing, but boring Holes through such Gems as they strung on Threads, to wear for Bracelets, and other the like Ornaments. But After-ages found out the Armenian, which proving much harder than it, became more generally used, and at length entirely banished the other. That this Armenian was of the same Kind with their Ἀκόναι, is evident from this Passage of Theophrastus; and that it had the Properties of the Cyprian, and was used as it, is plain from Stephanus's Account of it, παρέχονται δὲ λίθον τὴν γλύφȣσαν καὶ τρυπῶσαν τὰς σφραγῖδας. Pliny's Account of other Gems being bored by Cyprian Diamonds, means no more, than that they were wrought by a Stone of the Nature of the Ἀκόνη, brought from Cyprus.
- ↑ The Stone here described is the Lapis Lydius of the Author, commonly called the Touch-stone, from its Office of trying Metals by the Touch. The excellent Salmasius, generally so happy in understanding the Antients, and to whom I am obliged, in the Course of this Work, much oftener than to any other Author, is yet guilty of a Mistake in regard to this Stone; and erroneously accuses Pliny of a great Error, in a Thing in which that Author, however often faulty, is perfectly right. Mistakes in the Works of Men of such Eminence as this excellent Critic, ought, above all Things, to be set right; as they otherwise pass with the Generality of Readers as certain and unquestionable Truths. And this, in particular, being in the Name of a Stone, ought to be cleared rather than any other; as Errors about Names are what alone have given more than half the Confusion we have, in regard to the Works of the Antients. Pliny has said of this Stone, Auri argentique mentionem comitatur lapis, quem coticulam appellant, quondam non solitus inveniri nisi in flumine Tmolo, ut auctor est Theophrastus: nunc vero passim, quem alii Heraclium, alii Lydium vocant. On which Salmasius's Remark is this, Fallitur Plinius peccatque non mediocriter. Lapis hic Lydius quo aurum & argentum probatur, nunquam dictus est Heraclius, sed ille alter Lydius qui ferrum rapit. I am sorry to say it, but it is fallitur Salmasius, not Plinius; for we need look no farther than this Author to know, that Heraclius was as common a Name for the Touchstone among the Antients, as for the Loadstone: See p. 24, where he expressly says, that the Touchstone was so called, οἱ δὲ βασανίζειν τὸν ἄργυρον ὥσπερ ἥτε καλȣμένη λίθος Ἡράκλεια καὶ ἡ Λυδη. The Loadstone and Touchstone were therefore both called among the Antients, from their common Country, Lapis Lydius, and Lapis Heraclius. And for that Reason there have been great Errors in regard to them, in many of the less careful Writers since: As about the two Cyanus's, and, in short, all the Substances which they had thus confused, in not allowing them particular Names. It has since, been called Lapis Basanites, from its Use in trying Metals; Chrysites, from its particular Efficacy in Trial of Gold; and Coticula, because it was generally formed, for Conveniency, into the Shape of a small Whetstone. We are not to suppose, however, that this Stone alone serves for that Purpose; in Italy a green Marble, called there Verdello, is now generally used in its stead; and in most other Places the Basaltes, a black Marble, found in regularly shaped Columns, many placed together, as in Ireland, where a Quantity of it is called the Giants Causeway.
- ↑ The true Lydius was originally found only in this River, afterwards in many other Places; and at present is very plentiful in many of the larger Rivers of Germany, This Author gives a very circumstantial Account of the Property of this Stone; and they had in his Time very good ones, and knew very well how to use them, if they could do what he says with them. The true Lydius, tho' perfectly black, is a real Kind of Serpentine. Its Structure is the very same with the common green and white Serpentine; and there, is a green and black one, the black Parts of which. are perfectly like it.
- ↑ The Author now enters on an Account of the various Earths. The Differences of which are, indeed, very essential. It is to be observed, that he sets out in his usual Manner, justly, and philosophically. The two great Characteristics of Earths, are their easy Diffusibility in Water, and Concretion and Induration on being separated from it; and their being fusible by Fire. The first of these Qualities essentially distinguishes them from most other Fossils: The other they have in common with Stones; and, indeed, with almost all other fossile Bodies whatever. It was impossible for our Author to have known this, unless he had had our Assistances. But we find by Experiments with powerful Burning-glasses, that in a manner all fossile Substances, as well as Earths, are fusible and vitrifiable.
Earths, determinately speaking, are opake Bodies, diffusible by Water, and vitrifiable by extreme Heat; friable when dry, not inflammable, and generally insipid to the Taste: Not that these are certain, universal Characteristics, and liable to no Exceptions. Whatever may be the Case in the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, it is the Misfortune in the Study of fossile Bodies, that such has been the Confusion and Intermixture of their constituent Particles at the general Deluge, that there are none such to be established in them; for there are so many heterogene Particles, of a thousand different Kinds, mixed even with the same Fossil in different Places, that there is no determining to any Certainty, even its Manner of Variation from its pure State. What I have given may pass, however, for a general Character of what, in Treatises of Fossils, we mean by the Word Earths; which may be afterwards distinguished into Clays, Ochres, Boles, Marles, Chalks, and Loams. Sand, and the common vegetable Mould, which some give a Place in the Catalogues of Earths, have of right no Business among them; for the first is only either a smaller kind of Gravel, consisting of an infinite Number of small Pebbles of different Shapes and Colours; or the constituent Particles of the Stone of Strata or other Bodies accidentally loose: and the latter owes its present Mode of Existence, in a great measure, to putrifed animal and vegetable Substances of a thousand Kinds; and is, distinctly speaking, no genuine Fossil.
In order to the rightly understanding what is meant by the calling any Substance by either of the other Names, it may not be improper briefly to give their several Distinctions, so far as the general Uncertainty of the Fossile Kingdom will permit:
1. Clays are Earths composed of very fine Parts, smooth, heavy, not easily mixing with Water; and when mixed, not readily subsiding in it; compact, viscid, and leaving a fatty Impreflion on the Tongue: soft while in the Stratum, and hardening by Fire into a kind of stony Texture.
2. Ochres are ponderous earthy Substances, more fat than Chalk, and less so than Clay, readily diffusible in Water, and friable when dry, staining the Fingers in handling, and principally differing from the Boles, in that they are of a looser Texture.
3. Boles are ponderous earthy Substances, more fat than Chalk or Marle, but less so than Clay; ponderous, of an astringent Taste, melting in the Mouth, staining the Fingers; and generally partaking more or less of the Nature of Iron; as indeed, in some Degree, do most, if not all, the other Earths, but the Boles generally more than any.
4. Marles are light friable Substances, of a middle Nature between Clay and Chalk, not so fatty as the former, nor so dense as the latter, easily diffusible in Water, and, when tasted, dry, insipid, and adhering to the Tongue.
5. Chalks are earthy Substances, dense, brittle, readily diffusible in Water, and quickly separating themselves from it by Subsidence, staining the Fingers in handling, and, in tasting, sticking to the Tongue.6. And Loams are earthy Bodies, of a dense, rough Texture, consisting of clayey or ochreous Matter, with arenaceous Particles of various Figures, Sizes, and Colours, immersed in and intimately mixed with it.
Much more might be said on this Occasion, were this a proper Place for it; but a general and succint Account of what is meant by the general Names of Clays, &c. may be sufficient for what is intended in this Place; which is only to give something of a determinate Idea of what is meant by the Words Chalk, Bole, &c. when there shall be Occasion hereafter to say any of the Bodies described by this Author is of the Nature of one or other of these Substances.
- ↑ All Earths are vitrifiable by extreme Degrees of Heat. Nothing is more certain, than that the Vitrification, or converting the Substances of which Glass is made, into that Form, is the Effect of the extreme Force of Fire; and that the best sort of Glass is that in the making of which Flints have been used, is a Truth as much known now, as it was in the Days of Theophrastus.
The Things of which our Glass is made, are, Pot-ashes, some stony, arenaceous, or crystalline Matter, as Sand, Flints, or Crystal; and Manganeze, a ferrugincous Substance: To which some add a small Quantity of pure Salt of Tartar: These Ingredients are calcined into what the Workmen call Fritt; and afterwards run, by Violence of Fire, into Glass of different Colours and Degrees of Purity, according to the different Ingredients.
The Glass of the Antients was, in the different Ages of the World, in different Degrees of Purity and Excellence, according to the Ingredients of which they made it; which were Sand, Natrum, and Flints. Sand was the first Ingredient ever used or thought of for the making Glass; and for many Ages, there was even no other Sand used among the Greeks than that found clean washed on the Banks and in the Beds of Rivers, and this, from its Use, might very probably acquire the Name of Uëlitis, or Glass-sand.
In the beginning of this Sentence, the other Copies of this Author have ὑελιδος. I have ventured to follow Salmasius in his most rational Opinion, that it was in the Original ὑελίτιδος, and a little afterwards to give χάλικι, for what has hitherto stood χάλκῳ, according to De Laet; who very justly suspects, that Flints were much more likely to be made an Ingredient in Glass than Brass. And, indeed, when we consider the many Chasms and greater Errors in the Copies of this Author, we cannot wonder that such as these have been passed over, which were only Errors in a Letter or two.
- ↑ The Cilician Earth, used as a Preserver of Vines from Insects, was of the Class of the harder Bitumens, which the Heat of boiling Water would just bring to a proper Consistence for spreading over the Trunks of those Shrubs; and partly by entangling and smothering Insects that were climbing up, and partly by driving them away by its Smell, it preserved the Buds from being destroyed.
- ↑ The various Accounts we have of petrifying Earths and Waters, are all idle, erroneous, and imaginary, according to the ingenious and excellent Dr. Woodward; who affirms, that even what has been reported so confidently of the petrifying Water of the Lake Neagh in Ireland, one of the most famous petrifying Springs on record, has been shewn, by a more accurate Enquiry and Trials, not to be true; but that the petrified Wood brought thence, has been all of it lodged in the Earth at the Bottom of that Lake at the Time of the Deluge. If this be the Case here, it is, in all Probability, in other Places too; and what gives it the better Face of Probability is, that petrified Wood is as often found in the loose Strata of Gravel, &c. and lodged in Earth or Stone, as in the Beds of these Waters. Some may imagine, from having seen the Effects of the dropping Well at Knaresborough, Rushbank, and several other Springs in Northamptonshire, Chedworth, and Norleach Springs in Gloucestershire, and many other petrifying Springs, as they are called, in England, and elsewhere, that this is denying Things for which they have the Evidence of their Senses: But such Persons are to be taught, that what they esteem Petrifactions, are no other than Incrustations of sparry, argillaceous, and other Matter, brought away with these Waters in their Passage through the Strata, and settling from them again. There is great Difference between changing the Substance, and only covering the Surface of a Body. These Petrifactions, as they are called, being no other than Precipitations of Matter too heavy to be longer sustained in the Water; and which, being very fine, adapts itself to every Prominence and Cavity of the Body it settles upon, and exactly assumes its Shape. The first Process in these Operations of Nature forms only an extremely thin Crust over the Body; on which there after settle at Times many more, often to a Covering of considerable Thickness in the whole, but always giving evident Proofs of the Manner in which it was successively formed, by the Number of thin Strata of which it is composed.
- ↑ Vegetable Mould, I have before observed, is no genuine Fossil.
- ↑ Orpiment and Sandarach have been spoken of in general already; they are found in different Degrees of Purity and Beauty: In some Places, instead of the fine foliaceous Flakes, or shining Glebes, in which they are dug in Mines, they are taken up impure, ill-coloured, and in form of a coarse Powder; the yellow looking more like dirty Fragments of common Brimstone, and the red like dusty Pieces of a bad Bole, than like what they really are. These are, however, purchased by our Painters for Cheapness; and they say, with proper Management, make as good Colours as the finer Pieces; though, in their Barrels, they look more like Ashes than the beautiful Substances they really are. These come from some Part of Germany. And if the Orpiments and Sandarachs which happened to come in Theophrastus's way, were of this Kind, there is nothing strange in his supposing them to have been acted upon by subterranean Fires. We know at present seven distinct Kinds; a plated and spangled yellow; a spangled red; a solid red: and a yellow, a green, and a white of these coarser kinds. All the yellow are red when burnt: but those here named are red naturally.
- ↑ The Ochre here meant is the common yellow Kind. A Confirmation that the ἀῤῥενικὸν of the Antients was Orpiment, and not a white Arsenick, as some have erroneously judged, is this Passage of this Author, where he says, It is, when powdered, of the Colour of the yellow Ochre.
The Yellow Ochre of many Parts of this Kingdom is excellent for the Use of Painters; and some of it finer than any in the World: It is found of two Kinds; the one in great Plenty, constituting, in many Places, whole Strata of very considerable Thickness. This is, the most common, but is coarse, and often mixed with arenaceous and other heterogene Matter in different Quantities. The other Kind is found in the perpendicular Fissures of Strata. This is not common, nor to be had in any great Plenty, but is ever of a glorious Colour, and perfectly pure, and crumbles between the Fingers into an impalpable Powder. All the Matter which composes it must have been extremely fine and subtle, or it never could have got into those Places; into which there was no way for it, but through the Pores of the solid Strata. I know not whether our Painters are acquainted with this Kind, but it must, as Woodward has observed, be highly preferable to the common ones for their Use, because of its Fineness; and it might be had in some Quantity on searching the proper Places: I remember to have seen much of it in different Parts about Mendip Hills in Somersetshire, from whence I brought the Specimens in my Possesion.
- ↑ Reddle, or Red Ochre, is as common and as good in England as the Yellow: it is, like that, generally found itself forming Strata, but sometimes of a glorious Colour and extreme Fineness, in Fissures of other Matter. I have a Specimen of some from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, very little inferior to the Sort brought from the Island of Ormuz in the Persian Gulph; and so much valued and used by our Painters under the Name of Indian Red. It is, indeed, so like, both in Colour and Quality, that it is used for it, as the People employed in taking it up informed me; and sent to London to be sold under its Name. On comparing it with some of the true Persian kind, which I had from the East Indies, I find it of a paler Colour, but of a much finer Texture; and therefore, upon the whole, perhaps not less valuable.
Misunderstandings of Pliny, occasioned by Mistakes in the Copies, have been the Occasion of some very unlucky Errors about the μίλτος of the Greeks; which has been concluded, from what he has been supposed to have said, to be Cinnabar, which they called also Minium. The Passage which has given Occasion to these Mistakes stands in most Copies thus, Milton vocant Græci Minium, quidam Cinnabari; which seems an absolute Affirmation of this; but is, in reality, no other than a double Error; in the Words, and in the Pointing: And what Pliny meant to have said is evidently no other than this, Rubricam Milton Græci vocant, & Minium Cinnabari. The Greeks call Reddle Miltos, and Minium Cinnabar, which is exactly the Truth, And the Passage, as thus restored by Salmasius, stands accordingly, Jam enim Trojanis temporibus rubrica in honore erat, qui naves ea commendat, alias circa picturas, pigmentaque rarus. Milton vocant Græci, miniumque Cinnabari. Homer, speaking of the Grecian Ships, has Νῆας μιλτοπαρήους, and it is impossible he should mean by it, that they were stained with the Minium, or Cinnabar, which was not known till after his Time, as we shall see by this Author's Account of it. Cinnabar was originally the Indian Name of the Gum we now call Sanguis Draconis; and was given to this other Substance (called also Minium,) from its Resemblance to that Drug in Colour.
- ↑ Reddle always contains in it more or less of Iron; and there is one kind of it called Smitt in England, which is sometimes so rich, as to be worth working for that Metal, and has the Name of an Iron Ore. What this Author observes, of its being better in the Reddle Pits than in Iron Mines, is contrary to what we find now in England. The Reddle I just before have mentioned, as sometimes sold in London under the Name of Indian Red, is much the finest I have ever seen; and that was not from a Reddle Pit, but from among the Iron Ore in the Forest of Dean. I have seen the Pits peculiarly worked for this Substance in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and have of the Reddle from them, which is good, but much inferior to that of the Forest of Dean in all Respects: And, indeed, Reason informs us that it always naturally must be so; for it must, as I before observed, necessarily be finer in the Fissures of Strata; than where it constitutes Strata itself. And as all Reddle owes its Colour, which is its Value, to Iron, it will naturally have most of it, when nearest the largest Quantities of that Metal: I can therefore. see no Reason for that of the Pits being esteemed the best by the Antients, unless they valued it for its Texture and Consistence: Then, indeed, that must be preferred, as it is the most compact and dense; the other being ever looser and more crumbly.
- ↑ There were among the Antients two Earths of Lemnos well known and in common Use, though to different Purposes: These Distinctions have been since lost, and that Loss has caused us a great deal of Confusion: These two were distinguished by the Names of Terra Lemnia, and Rubrica Lemnia, Γῆ Λήμνια and Μίλτος Λήμνια, the Lemnian Reddle, and Lemnian Earth: The first of these was used by Painters, as it was taken out of the Pit; the second was first made into Cakes, and sealed with great Ceremonies; and was in very high Esteem in Medicine. I shall be the more particular on these Earths, as it will naturally lead to a better Understanding of some other of the Earths now much in use in Medicine; the Names of which at least are so. The great Occasion of the Errors about the Lemmian Earths, is the Mistake of Pliny, in confounding them together, as he evidently has done; not distinguishing the medicinal sealed Earth of that Place, from the Reddle used by Painters. The sealed Earth was esteemed sacred, and the Priests alone were suffered to meddle with it. They mixed it with Goat's Blood, made the Impression of a Seal upon it; and it was, therefore, called σφρᾳγις, and Sphragis by the Latins; ἡ δὲ Λημνία λεγομένη γῆ ἐϛὶν ἐκ τινὸς ὑπονόμȣ ἀντρώδȣς ἀναφερομένη καὶ μιγνυμένη αἵματι ἀιγείῳ, ἣν οἱ ἐκεῖ ἄνθρωποι ἀναπλάσσοντες, καὶ σφαγιζόμενοι εἰκόνι ἀιγος, σφαγῖδα κααλοῦσιν, Dioscorides. This, therefore, was the Sealed Earth of Lemnos, the Earth used in Medicine, and called by the Physicians Lemnian Earth: The Hand the Priests had in the making it up, got it the Name of Sacred Earth, Γῆ ἱερά. And this seems to be the very same with the true Terra Lemnia used at this time; which is a fat unctuous Clay, of a pale red Colour, made up in Cakes of about half an Ounce Weight, sometimes less, and brought from Lemnos, and many other Parts of the Turkish Dominions: This we now call Terra Lemnia Rubra, by way of Distinction from a white Earth, less unctuous and more astringent than the red, which is dug in Lemnos only. And we have sometimes, beside these, an unsealed Earth from the same Place, which is yellowish, with blackish Specks: it has this Advantage of the other, that we are sure it is genuine; for we are sensible they are too often counterfeited.
These were the Terræ Lemniæ used in Medicine. The Rubrica Lemnia was a kind of Reddle of a firm Consistence and deep red Colour, dug in the same Place, but never made into any Form, or sealed; but purchased in the rough Glebes by Artificers of many kinds, who had Uses for it in Colouring. That Pliny confounds these two Substances is to be seen in this Passage: Rubricæ genus in ea voluere maximè intelligi. Quidam secunde auctoritatis, palmam enim Lemniæ dabant. Minio proxima hæc est, multum antiquis celebrata, cum insula in qua nascitur, nec nisi signata venundabatur: unde & Sphragidem appellavere: Where it is evident, that he thought the Lemnian Reddle was the Substance sealed and called Sphragis, or Sealed Earth. But that they were not the same, and the Earth, and not the Reddle was the Substance which was sealed, is evident from Galen, l. i. de Antidotis, Καθάπερ ἐπὶ Λεμνίας γῆς καὶ μίλτȣ, καλεῖν δ᾽ ἀυτὴν ἄμεινον ȣ᾽ μίλτον, ἀλλὰ γῆν. ἐϛὶ γάρ τις Λεμνία μίλτος, ἐν τῇ wide, noAsiy 9 dutiy diueivoy gd pinto, oad vi. él yep Tis Aguile uiATos, €v Ti Anpve, yewoueon ampes annens a psias emir deios, é way él¢ ds’ 4 “are pévy Aypvia, oQpayis,
- ↑ The Sinopic Earth, which we know at present, is the first Kind mentioned by this Author; the other two we are wholly unacquainted with, though among the Antients they were much in Esteem with Painters. Our Rubrica Sinopica is a dense, heavy, firm Substance, of a deep red Colour, staining the Fingers in handling, and of a styptic astringent Taste. Tournefort imagines it a native Crocus Martis; and certain it is, that it owes its Colour, at least, to that Metal.
It is dug at this Time, as it was in that of Theophrastus, in Cappadocia, and carried to Sinope for Sale, from whence it has its Name, and from whence Sinopis became afterwards a general Name for the Red Ochres. Μίλτος εἶ δος ἐρυθρὸν Σινώπιδος, Hesychius; and so many others. If the present Esteem for this Substance was greater than it is, as indeed I can on Experience affirm it ought to be, it might be had, I believe, in many other Places beside Cappadocia. I have some of it perfectly fine, which was dug in the New Jerseys in America, where it is frequently found at about 15 or 20 Feet deep, and is called, (I suppose from its Colour and staining the Hands) Blood-stone. It was originally used, not only in Painting, but in Medicine; and though now neglected, and not known in the Shops, deserves to be brought into Use again, being a much better Astringent, as I have found by repeated Trials of that from America, than any of the Earths now in use.
- ↑ The making a Red Ochre from the Yellow by burning is as well known, and as much practised among the People who deal in Colours for Painting now, as it was in the Time of this Author. I cannot but observe, however, that his calling this a Sinopis, is a Proof of what I have before observed, that that Word became a Name for all the Substances of the Red Ochre kind. As to what this Author observes, of the native Red Ochres owing their Colour to Fire, it is very certain, that most of them shew no Marks of ever having been acted on by that Element. And we know very well, that the ferrugineous Particles which can make the Matter red in burning, can also impart that Colour to it without the Assistance of Fire. Notwithstanding which, it must be allowed, that there are some of these red Substances; and not only these, but some other Bodies, particularly some of the Hæmatites kind, which seem, even in their native Beds, to carry evident Marks of their having been wrought on and changed by Fire; though it is not easy to say, how or when it should have happened.
- ↑ The factitious Sinopis just mentioned, was no other than a factitious Reddle, properly speaking; and what the Author here mentions, was probably another Kind, made from some other Species of Yellow Ochre, and called Reddle, from its being of a pale red, and resembling that of the common native Red Ochre; just as the other was called factious Sinopis, from its being of a deeper Colour, and resembling the genuine Sinopis of Cappadocia.
- ↑ I have, in another Place, observed the Confusion which has arisen from Pliny's confounding the Cyanus Gem with the Cyanus Paint, or Lapis Armenus. We have a great Instance of that Error in his Translation of this Passage of our Author; of which he has given the Sense, but has rendered the Whole perfectly unintelligible, by saying all this of the Cyanus Gem, which it is most evident Theophrastus says of the Lapis Armenus, or Cyanus Paint. There can be no question but that this Author is here treating of that Substance, the Cyanus Paint, or Lapis Armenus, and not the Lapis Lazuli; as he has done with the Gems long since; and is now treating of the Earths, and particularly those used in Painting: and his Description of the Use of it makes this so notoriously plain, that it is astonishing Pliny could mistake him: The Passage in Pliny is (speaking of the Cyanus Gem) Optima Scythica, dein Cypria, postremo Ægyptia. Adulteratur maximè tincturâ, idque in gloria regis Ægyptii ascribitur, qui primus eam tinxit; dividitur autem & hæc in mares fæminasques inest ei aliquando & aureus pulvis, &c.
- ↑ The Colours, of different Degrees of Deepness, which were prepared from this Substance, were separated by means of Water: The Method of preparing them was, by beating the Matter to Powder, and putting that in a large Quantity of Water, and saving, in different Vessels, that which subsided at different Times: the heavier Part, consisting of larger Particles, sinking almost immediately, and the lighter, which consisted of much smaller and finer, not till after a considerable Time. These different Quantities of Colour, that had subsided at the various Times, were then separately ground to a proper Fineness, and kept as different Paints for Use. And this is the Meaning of the λεπτοτάτων and παχυτάτων of our Author, and Crassiorem tenuioremve of Pliny: Which some, who imagined they were talking of the Degree of Colour, and not of the Fineness and Coarseness of the Particles of the Matter, could not bring themselves to understand. Indeed, in many of the Passages complained of as unintelligible in the Antients, the Obscurity has been more owing to the wrong Apprehension of the Commentators, than the Perplexity of the Authors.
- ↑ We have three or four different Methods of making Ceruse now used among us; but all are of the same Kind with this of Theophrastus, and are the Effect of Vinegar on Lead. It is by some made by infusing Filings of Lead in strong Vinegar; which in twelve or fourteen Days will almost entirely dissolve them, and leave a very good Ceruse at the Bottom of the Vessel. Others make it, by plunging thin Plates of the same Metal into Vinegar, and placing them. in a gentle Heat; these Plates will be, in about ten Days or less, covered with a white Rust, which is to be scraped off, and the Plates plunged into the Vinegar again; and so scraped at Times till they are wholly eaten in Pieces: All the different Scrapings are afterwards ground to Powder together and kept for Use. Others make it, by putting Vinegar into an earthen Vessel, then covering it closely with a Plate of Lead, and setting it in the Sun in hot Weather: this Plate will, in about ten Days, be dissolved and precipitated in form of Ceruse to the Bottom of the Vessel.
- ↑ Our Manner of making Verdigrise is as like this of the Antients, as that of our making Ceruse; and it is very evident, that both the one and the other have been handed down from very early Ages to us. The Manner in which we make it is this: The Pressings of Grapes, when taken from the Press, are spread on Hurdles, and laid in the Sun to dry; after they have lain in this Manner two or three Days, and are pretty well dried, they are made into a Paste with Wine; and left to ferment; afterwards, while in a State of Fermentation, they are rolled into Balls, and again laid in Wine till thoroughly wetted with it; and then are placed in proper Vessels at a little Distance over the Wine, and shut up together in this Manner for near a Fortnight. After this they smell very strong and pungent, and are in a Condition to extract the Rust from Copper. They are then beaten together into a Paste, and laid, Stratum super Stratum, with thin Plates of Copper, on wooden Bars in the same Vessels; and in a Week or ten Days the Verdigrise is formed. The Plates are then taken out, and wrapt in linen Cloths dipped in Wine, and laid for three Weeks in a Cellar. After which the Verdigrise is scraped off for Use.
- ↑ The Antients, we find, had what they called the native and factitious Cinnabar as well as we: their native Cinnabar was the same with ours, but the factitious widely different. Theirs was no other, than a Preparation of a fine shining arenaceous Substance, which was the Sil Atticum Romanorum, injudiciously confounded by Vitruvius with the Ochra Attica of the Antients; whereas ours is a Substance formed, by the Art of Chemistry, of Quicksilver and Sulphur, into a dense heavy Mass, of a bright red, marked with shining silvery Streaks.
The native Cinnabar of the Antients and of the Moderns are, however, the same; and theirs, as well as ours, was a dense heavy mineral Substance, of a shining red Colour; from which Quicksilver was extracted. This Substance was also called Minium. In After-times, becoming subject to Adulterations with Lead Ore calcined to a Redness, after the two Names had long-been used in common, the Word Minium became at last appropriated to the calcined Lead Ore only; and the Cinnabar was used only to signify what we now understand by it, the Substance from which Quicksilver was to be extracted.
The Word Cinnabar κιννάβαρι, however, among the old Writers in Medicine, frequently is used to sgnify a Thing of a very different Kind, a vegetable Juice, called by us Dragons-blood; and long idly believed to be really the Blood of Dragons. This generally was, however, called Κιννάβαρι Ἰνδικὸν, from its Country, to distinguish it from the other, or mineral Cinnabar, γίνεται δὲ ἐν ἀυτῇ καὶ Κιννάβαρι τὸ λεγόμενον, Ἰνδικὸν ἀπ` τῶν δένδρων ὡς δάκρυ συναγόμενον, Dioscorides.
This Cinnabar they therefore knew as a perfectly distinct Substance, though called by the same Name. And the mineral native Cinnabar, the Thing here spoken of, was, we find, a hard stony Substance: Ours is a compact weighty Body, found sometimes pure, and sometimes incorporated with different other Substances, or containing other Substances incorporated with it.
The pure Cinnabar is generally of a bright red, sometimes deeper, sometimes paler, but commonly sparkling or glossy; some is found of a deeper and duskier Colour in the Mass, but becomes of a fine Red when rubbed to Powder: And some of it resembles the Hæmatites of certain Kinds.
When incorporated with other Substances, it is chiefly found in Spar, or in arenaceous or sparry Stones; sometimes, but much more rarely, in clayey Earth; and sometimes in a talky Matter, greyish, or bluish, or whitish.
It frequently holds incorporated with it, beside Quicksilver, Gold, Silver, sparry and marcasitical Bodies, and sometimes Lead.
It is found in Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Spain, France, Italy, and the East-Indies; but no where in greater Plenty than about Rosenburg in Hungary; where it lies chiefly in a whitish sparry Stone on the Sides of the Hills; and is gathered by the poor People, after it has been cleared and uncovered by Rains. The purer native Cinnabar has been used to be much esteemed both by the Painters and in Medicine; but our factitious kind equalling it in Beauty, and being much cheaper, has banished it from among the Painters. And it were to be wished the Case were the same in Medicine, for the Dose may be much better ascertained in the factitious, than the native; which we can never be sure of as to its exact Degree of Purity, and which may also contain other mineral Substances, which we have no Intent of giving, mixed and incorporated with it, That of Hungary, however, is what always ought to be kept for internal Use (if it be to be so used) as it is commonly more pure than that of any other Place.
- ↑ We have now many Ways of extracting the Quicksilver from Cinnabar, but all by the Assistance of Fire. Where the Mineral is rich, the common Way is by a kind of Destillation absorb the Sulphur. This Kind is generally destilled by the Retort, with Quicklime, Filings of Iron, Wood-ashes, Salt of Tartar, Potashes, or something of that kind. And from the Residuum of these Destillations, a pure and genuine Lac Sulphuris may be prepared, by the common Way of boiling and precipitating with destilled Vinegar. Our factitious Cinnabar, made only by subliming Mercury and Sulphur together, exactly resembles the native of some kinds in all its Qualities; and yields its Quicksilver pure and fluid again by the same Means.
But beside all these Ways of procuring Quicksilver from the Cinnabars, it is sometimes found pure, unmixed, and fluid in the Bowels of the Earth. And this Kind Dioscorides distinguishes by the Name of ὑδράργυρος καθ᾽ ἑαυτόν. This is cleared from its Earth by washing in common Water; and from some other heterogene Matters, by Salt and Vinegar, and then is strained through Leather, and called Virgin Quicksilver.
It is a Mineral of a perfectly singular kind, and when pure and unmixed, keeps constantly its fluid Form. It may be amalgamed with all other metallic Substances, but is most difficultly made to mix with Antimony, Iron, and Copper. It penetrates the Substance of all Metals, and dissolves, and makes them brittle. It is the heaviest of the Metals except Gold, which is to it as 4 to 3, or thereabout; and therefore will not swim in it, as all other Metals do. It is, however, notwithstanding its Weight, extremely volatile, and easily raised in Form of a very subtle Vapour; and in that Form is dissipated entirely by means of Fire.
Quicksilver, from its ill Effects on the Miners and People employed about large Quantities of it, was long esteemed a Poison the Antients. Dioscorides reckons it a Thing which must have very pernicious Effects in Medicine; and Galen believed it highly corrosive. It first got into Use externally among the Arabians; and afterwards, but not till long afterwards, was introduced into the Number of internal Medicines, from the repeated Observations of its Safety and good Effects when given to Cattle, and from the hardy Attempts of some unhappy People, who had ventured. to take it down in large Quantities (in order to procure Abortion) but without any Effect.
- ↑ The various Operations of Nature, in the Formation of these and other fossile Substances, have been treated of at large in the Beginning of this Work; the greatest of all Distinctions among them, is that of such as are found in the perpendicular Fissures, and such as are deposited in Strata. The Difference between these Kinds, in their Degree of Purity and Fineness, is extremely great, and must necessarily be so, from their different Manner of Formation; as those of the perpendicular Fissures have been formed by Percolation, at different Times; and those of Strata, by mere Subsidence from among the Waters of the general Deluge.
- ↑ The high-colour'd Earths used by Painters, and in Medicine, owe their several Colours, in a great Measure, to the same Cause as the Gems, &c. do theirs; a Mixture of metalline Matter of various Kinds, which stains them, as it does those, with the Colour it naturally yields, in the particular kind of Solution its Particles have met with. Thus Copper, dissolved in a proper Alkali, makes, with a proper gemmeous Matter, a blue Sapphire; and with Earth, the Lapis Armenus, a Substance before described. And the same Particles dissolved in a proper Acid, give to gemmeous Matter the Colour which makes it an Emerald; and to Earth, that which makes it the Terre verte, an Earth used by our Painters, of a dusky greenish Colour, and dense, unctuous, clayey Constitution; generally brought from Italy, but to be met with entirely as good here at Home: And Iron, which gives that glorious Red to the Ruby, the Garnet, and the Amethyst, with Earth, makes the red Boles, Ochres, and Clays.
- ↑ The Melian Earth of the Antients was a fine white Marle, of a loose crumbling Texture, and easily diffusible in Water or other Liquors. Some have imagined it to have been of other Colours; but that it was really white, we have the unquestionable Authority of the Antients: Pliny not only describes it to be so, in his general Account of it, but afterwards confirms it in another Chapter, where he says it was the White of the great Painters of Antiquity: Lib. 35. c. 6. speaking of it among the other Earths, he says, Melinum candidum et ipsum, est optimum in Melo insula. And lib. 35. c. 7. speaking of the Painters of Antiquity, he says, Quatuor coloribus solis, immortalia illa opera fecere, ex albis Melino, ex Silaciis Attico, ex rubris Sinopide Pontica, ex nigris Atramento. I mention these two Passages, as the best Way of judging certainly from Pliny; for he often errs, and, where he has Occasion to mention the same Substance a second Time, frequently contradicts what he had before said of it. This is to be observed in too many Places in that Author, and has arisen from this; that he was a general Collector, and often carelesly put down what different Authors had said of the same Substance, either under the same, or under different Names, in different Places of his Work: Where two such Authors had been both uncertain as to the Truth, and probably the World in general also, they frequently made different Conjectures; and where one had erred, the other frequently corrected him. The Accounts of both, therefore, given by a third Person in their own Words, in different Parts of that Author's History, and that without mentioning them as the Opinions of different Persons, has been the Occasion of great Part of the Contradictions in that Writer. But where he has mentioned the same Thing in different Places, and that with the same Description, I always judge he may be depended on; and that the general Opinion of the World was on his Side.
With this Account of the Melian Earth, as white, it is very surprising that the generality of Authors, and even those of the first Class, have constantly imagined it to be yellow. The Occasion of the Mistake has been, that the Melinus Color of the Latins, Μήλινον χρῶμα of the Greeks, is yellow. This, they took it for granted, had its Origin from the Colour of the Melian Earth, a Substance antiently used in Painting, and which therefore they concluded must be yellow, and described it accordingly. In this manner have numberless other Errors crept into Natural History by Accident, and by Mistakes, and been afterwards sacredly propagated by a servile Set of Writers, who have never dared to think for themselves, but have taken upon trust whatever they have found in their Ancestors Works, however contrary to Reason, and, in many Cases, even to the Testimony of their Senses. The Occasion of this so general Error, in the present Case, is no more than the mistaking the Etymology of the Word Μήλινος, Melinus, which is not derived from Μηλιὰς, or Μηλία γῆ, the Melian Earth here described, but from μήλις, pomum, an Apple; and exactly meant that kind of Yellow common on ripe Apples of many Sorts; and the strict Sense of the Verb μηλίζειν, is, according to the most correct Lexicographers, Colore luteo esse, sive pomum referente: These are their very Words. And hence, from an Error in a Subject foreign to the Matter, has happened, we see, an egregious Error in that Study, and which has been propagated on from Author to Author, for want of consulting even a good Lexicon.
- ↑ The Cimolian Earth had (like the other Kinds) its Name from the Place where it was originally dug, the Island Cimolus. Many Authors have ranked this among the Clays, and Tournefort makes it a Chalk, but it appears to me to have been neither of thefe, but properly and distinctly a Marle; an Earth of a middle Nature, between both: It was white, dense, of a loose Texture, and generally impure, having Sand or small Pebbles among it, insipid to the Taste, but soft and unctuous to the Touch. Many have imagined our Fullers-earth to be the Cimolia of the Antients, but erroneously: The Substance which comes nearest it of all the now known Fossils, is the Steatites of the Soap Rock of Cornwall; which is the common Matter of a great Part of the Cliff near the Lizard Point. The Antients used their Cimolia for cleaning their Cloaths: And partly from the similar Use of our Fullers-earth, and partly from an erroneous Opinion of that's being the fame with the Cimolia of the Antients, it has obtained the fame Name. We, indeed, know at present two different Substances under this Denomination, with the different Epithets of alba and purpurascens; a much more apposite one than the last of which might easily have been used. By the Cimolia Alba, we mean the Earth used for making Tobacco-pipes; and by the Cimolia Purpurascens, the common Fullers-earth, of such constant and important Use in the cleaning our woollen Cloths.
- ↑ The Samian Earth is a dense, ponderous, unctuous Clay, of a subastringent Taste, and either white, or ash-coloured; it is ufed principally in Medicine, and it has the same Virtues with the Terra Lemnia, and others of this Class. It is dug in the Island of Samos, from whence it has its Name, and never was found in any other Place that we know of. Pliny, indeed, says that it was also dug in the Island of Melos, but not used by the Painters because of its Fatness. He errs, however, in this, which is apparently only a careless Translation of the Passage before us. And it may be observed, from a thousand Instances of this kind, how necessary it was to bring the genuine Work of this Author on the Subject to a more frequent and easy Use, to avoid the being misled by Pliny and others, who have misrepresented so many Things from him; and given those Misrepresentations and Errors, as Accounts from their own Knowledge: The Passage in Pliny is, Melinum candidum et ipsum est optimum in Melo insula; in Samo nascitur, sed eo non utuntur Pictores propter pinguitudinem. It is most evident, that this is taken from the Passage now before us in Theophrastus; but Pliny deviates from his Original into a very great Error: Theophrastus does not say, that the Melian Earth was dug in Samos, and was not used by the Painters; but that the Samian Earth, another Substance which he had just before mentioned, and was going to say something more about, was not used by them; and adds, that in both these Places there were many Kinds of Earth, but not that the Kind named from either, was found in the other.
- ↑ Our Author's Account of this Earth, and the Manner of digging it, has been generally copied by those who have described it since. Pliny says, accubantes effodiunt ibi inter saxa venas scrutantes. And in another Place, Samiæ duæ sunt, quæ Syropicon (or Collyrion) et quæ Aster appellantur. And other of the old Authors much to the same Effect.
I have before observed, that this Earth was either white or ash-coloured; these two Colours constituted the Difference between the two Kinds, and were what were called the Aster and Collyrion: The white was the Aster, supposed by many to be a Talc, and so called, for its shining; and the ash-coloured was called, from its Colour, Collyrion, Κολλύριον. Κολλύρα among the Greeks signified a kind of Loaf baked in Ashes, and usually brought to the Colour of the Ashes in the doing: And from a Resemblance to this was this Earth called Collyrion, or the ash-coloured Samian Earth.
Pliny imagined it had the Name from its being a common Ingredient in certain Medicines for the Eyes, commonly called Collyria; but Dioscorides, from whom he took the Occasion of this Conjecture, does not attribute this Quality to the Samian Earth of either kind, but to the Lapis Samius, a Stone found among it. And from this Error alone it is, that so many have imagined that the Samian Earth was used in Medicines for the Eyes. Indeed, when an Error in regard to the Antients is once set on foot, there is no knowing what a Series of different Mistakes may be the Consequences of it. These Medicines for the Eyes, called Collyria, though they did not give the Name to the ash-coloured Samian Earth so called, may serve, however, to confirm the Opinion of its having obtained it on occasion of its Colour resembling that of Ashes; since they had theirs from the same Cause, and were only called Collyria, that is ash-coloured Medicines, from their being made of Substances of the Tutty kind, and resembling Ashes in Colour.
- ↑ The Antients had many kinds of Gypsum, very different from one another, and used for different Purposes: but the principal were three; 1. the Terra Tymphaica Gypsum incolis dicta, Γῆ Τυμφαίκὴ ἣν οί περὶ Τυμφαίαν καὶ τοὺς τόπȣς ἐκείνȣς καλοῦσι Γύψον, the Tymphaican Earth, called by the Inhabitants Gypsum; 2. the real genuine Gypsum, which was made, by burning, from a certain talcy Substance; and 3. that made by burning many different Species of Stones of the Alabaster and other similar kinds.
The Tymphaican here mentioned appears to have been an Earth approaching to the Nature of the Marles, but with this remarkable Quality, that it would make a kind of Plaister or Cement by mixing with Water, without having passed the Fire. This Substance is yet to be found in many Places, if carefully sought after. I remember to have taken up an Earth, which I found to have this Property, near Goodwood, the Seat of his Grace the Duke of Richmond, in Sussex. And Mr. Morton is recorded to have sent to Dr. Woodward, from Clipston Stone-pit in Northamptonshire, an Earth truly of this kind, and endued with this Quality, under the Name of Calx Nativa: His is described to be a whitish gritty Earth; but what I found was a true genuine Marle, something loose in Texture, but with no Sand or other stony Matter among it; and of this kind the Gypsum Tymphaïcum evidently was. This Author calls it an Earth only, and observes, that the People about the Places where it was found called it Gypsum, I suppose from its having the Properties of that Substance. As to its Use about Cloaths, the Substance I picked up in Sussex seemed of a Texture so much resembling that of Fullers-earth, that if it could be conveniently used, it might promise to answer all the Purposes of it, and so did the Gypsum Tymphaïcum of the Antients, of which Pliny expressly says, Græcia pro Cimolia Tymphaïco utitur Gypso, lib. 36. c. 17.
This therefore, or something like this, must be the first of the three principal Gypsums of the Antients; the other two Kinds I shall have Occasion to mention hereafter; but must first observe, in regard to this Passage, that it has been strangely corrupted in different Copies; instead of Γίψον, it is in several Ψύχον; and what I have given Κιμωλίᾳ, from the very judicious Conjecture of De Laet, is in most Copies ῆ μόνον. The Use of our Fullers-earth about Cloaths, and, in all Probability, that of the Cimolia of the Antients, was the same: this is not only that trifling one, of the taking out accidental Spots of Grease got in the Wearing, but what is the most important of all things in the Woollen Cloth Manufacture, the cleansing the Pieces of it, at the time of making, from that vast Quantity of Grease, Tar, and other Filth they are fouled with, from the Tar and Grease used externally in the Disorders of the Sheep before shorn, and from the Oil necessary to be thrown into the Cloth in the working.
- ↑ The Cyprian Gypfsum here mentioned I account a different kind from the Tymphean, and to be, indeed, the true genuine Gypsum made from the talcy Substance before mentioned. Pliny seems to favour this Division of the Gypsums into three Kinds, where he says, lib. 36. c. 23. Cognata Calci res Gypsum eft; plura ejus genera. Nam e Lapide coquitur, ut in Syria ac Thuriis: & e terra foditur, ut in Cypro & Perrhibæis, e summa tellure & Tymphaïcum est. And according to this, the three Kinds before distinguished may be called the Tymphæan, Cyprian, and Syrian. The Tymphæan is the earthy one already described, which might, very probably, be found near the Surface, as being truly an Earth, not a Stone. The second is the true genuine Gypsum, made from the Talc, or Lapis Specularis, called also, for that Reason, Metallum Gypsinum. And the third, the Kind made from the Alabasters and other Stones of a similar Texture.
That this Cyprian Gypsum, or the Kind burnt from the Lapis Specularis, or genuine Metallum Gypsinum, was the finest and best of all the Kinds, we have also Pliny's Word, lib. 36. c. 24. Omnium autem optimum fieri compertum est e lapide speculari squamamve talem habente.
- ↑ The Syrian, or third kind of Gypsum, this Author here observes, was made by burning certain Stones, which he afterwards very well describes, and which we may fee from his Account were of the very Kind with those we now principally use for that Purpose, and call Parget, or Plaister-stone, different kinds of which are dug in Derbyshire and Yorkshire in England, and the Pits of Montmartre in France. There are many other Kinds in different Parts, both of France and England, very little different from these and from each other; but in general all of them very well answer the Description Theophrastus gives of the Stones from which what I have called the Syrian Gypsum of the Antients was made.
It is to be observed that we, as well as the Antients, burn many very different Stones into our Gypsum, or Plaister of Paris, as it is commonly called; some of which are of the Nature of the foliaceous, others of the fibrous Talcs; others composed of Matter seeming the same with that of the Talcs, but amassed together in a different Form, being neither fibrous nor foliaceous, but seemingly in a coarse Powder, or arenaceous Particles of uncertain Figures, and held together in the same manner as the Grit of the Stone of Strata: And finally, others truly and legitimately of the Alabaster kind; in many of these, Particles of genuine sparry Matter also discover themselves; and in several, the Masses are wholly surrounded with, and in many Places their very Substance is penetrated by a reddish earthy Matter: These require different Degrees of burning, according to their different Texture, to bring them to the State proper for Use: But in most of them it is done in a very little Time, and by a very slight Calcination, in comparifson to that required for equally altering most other Substances. The reddish Kinds burn to a Gypsum equally white with that made from the whitest. The Gypsum of Montmartre in France, the best and finest in the World, is burnt to a proper State in about two Hours. Ours of Derbyshire takes but little more Time, if properly managed; and that of Yorkshire, which is generally redder and coarser, a little more than that. We have no Opportunities of trying the Lapis Specularis of the Antients now; but by the general Consent of the Writers of Antiquity, the Gypsum made of it exceeded all the other Kinds: The Substance itself from this obtained a Name, by which it became afterwards generally known, which was Gypsinum Metallum. The Want of knowing this, however, among the Commentators on some of the Works of the Writers since, has occasioned much blundering; for finding Accounts, in the most express Words, of Windows and Reflecting Mirrors, made of the Metallum Gypsinum; and not conceiving that this was only another Name for the Lapis Specularis, which it had obtained from being the Matter of which Gypsum was made, they made no Scruple of blotting out the Word Gypsinum, because they did not understand it; a Thing too customary among this set of People; and supplied its Place with Cyprinum, leaving a Passge which they imagined very dark, much darker than they found it.
- ↑ Pliny says, the Stones burnt to make Gypsum ought to be of the Marble or Alabaster Kind; and that in Syria they chose the hardest they can get; lib. 36. c. 24. Qui coquitur Lapis non dissimilis Alabastritæ esse debet aut marmoroso; in Syria durissimos ad id eligunt, &c. His Commentators say he took this from our Author; hæc ex Theophrasti, lib. Περὶ λίθων, Dal. If he did, he has been very careless in translating him; a Fault I have been obliged to observe in some other Places, that he is too apt to be guilty of. In this Passage, however, I am of Opinion he is not justly to be accused of it; for, with his Commentators Leave, I must observe, that it appears very plainly, from this and the Context, that he did not take it from Theophrastus. This Author does not say, that they chose in Syria the hardest Stones, but ἀπλουστέρους, those of the simplest Texture; and the Remainder of the Sentence in Pliny, which is, coquuntque fimo bubulo ut celerius urantur, being evidently from some other Source, as there is not the least Syllable of any Thing like it in this Author, 'tis probable, that he had it together from some other Writer, or from the common Tradition of his Time. I must confess, the Word ϛερεοτατȣς coming so close after the μαρμάρȣς καὶ ἁπλȣϛέρȣς, would have made me very naturally suspect Pliny of taking his Account carelesly from this Author; but the Context, which is evidently not hence, may very reasonably clear him. This I have been the more particular in observing here, as it may be a Means of clearing that Author in some, at least, of the many Pasages in which he may be, even more than he deserves, accused of misunderstanding the Authors he copied from: In too many Places he has indeed but too evidently done this, though in some, where he is suspected of it, perhaps he may not be copying from the Authors we accuse him of misrepresenting, but from others, who had either accidentally, or purposely, deviated from what those had written, and whose Works may be now lost to us.
- ↑ What I have given εἰς τὴν κονίασιν, speaking of the Use of the Gypsum in Italy, has stood in most Copies εἰς τὴν οἰκεῖον, which has been distrufted by many not to be the genuine Reading; but imagined by Furlanus to have been erroneously put for εἰς τὸν οἶνον, and he has translated the Passage accordingly; the κονίασω is from the Opinion of Salmasius, and seems to have been the very Meaning of the Author; for having been just before mentioning its Use on the Outsides of Houses, and being going on to recount its other various Qualities; there was nothing so natural for him to mention next, as its Use in ornamenting the inner Parts of them, the very Thing for which it is most famous now.
The Gypsum is nothing more than a Selenite, less elegant than the Rhomboidal or plated Kinds. Those resemble the foliaceous Talcs; and these the softer of the Alabasters. We may always by Glasses distinguish the flaky Texture of the Selenite in the Gypsum; and those unerring Tests by Weight and Firmness, give convincing Proofs of the Truth. Gypsum is lighter as well as softer than Spar; but differs very little in either of these Qualities from the pure Selenite: To which we may add the Effect of Fire; for the finest Plaister in the World is made of an absolute pure plated Selenite, found in the Fissures of the Strata of the common Gypsum at Montmartoe.
We have, in England, five distinct Kinds of Gypsum: 1. A pure white tender Kind; 2. A grey, firm, and compact one: 3. A yellowish; this also is tender: 4. A reddish Kind; all these are of a dull coarse Aspect; but we have a 5th, which is bright, clear, and glossy, and is most excellent of all; and, beside these, Saxony affords a native Plaister Dust, white, and
- ↑ The Observation with which the Author concludes this Work is unquestionably most just. We are well acquainted with the many Changes which the Particles of Fire, insinuating themselves into Bodies, are able to make: Of which, their changing the Talcs and Alabasters into Gypsum, and the Lime-stones of various Kinds into Lime, are not the least worthy our Observation, though, from their being common, and every Day before our Eyes, they are but little regarded. What the Nature of that Change is; and that the Expulsion of the fixed Air from the Stones is the great Cause, we have now learned with Certainty from the ingenious and excellent Dr. Priestly.
resembling the others when they have passed the Fire.
- ↑ See Appendix.
- ↑ Quam Gemmam Plinius Sapphirum vocat Cyanus est seu Lapis Lazuli. Boet. 183.
The Sapphirus of Pliny is much different from our Sapphire; and his Description answers to the Lapis Lazuli. Woodw. Meth Foss. 29.
- ↑ See Dr. Rutty's Natural History of the County of Dublin.
- ↑ Pliny, L. 37. c. 8.
- ↑ Ego Lyncurium a succino differre non video: et id quoque pro Gemma habitum olìm, præsertim quòd aureo colore pellucet et splendet, minimè dubito.