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BOOK V
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89
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gray and when pulverized with flint yields a milky powder from which galactites takes its name. Both powders are sweet although that from meli-tites is sweeter and the mineral takes its name from honey because of the similarity of taste. The Achelous river yields galactites and
it is found along the rivers in Goslar, Saxony. In Hildesheim it is
found in a sandstone pit where it is deposited each year from a milky,
glue-like juice. Masses several times the size of a boy's head are
often found here. Each cleanses because it contains some heat but melitites is the better since it contains the most. Each is beneficial when applied as an ointment to running eyes and ulcers. Galactites, having
been pulverized and drunk with water or sweet wine, is said to produce
abundant breast milk. The stones from Argaeus, Cappadocia, when
dissolved produce a milk-like solution. Galen reports that these
destroy gall-stones.
Calcareous rock is the parent of gypsum (gypsum). Veins
of gypsum cut the calcareous rocks of the mountains of Misena near
Sala. The nature of gypsum, although unusual, is closer to a stone than
an earth as Theo-phrastus rightly believed. It occurs in many places
and we shall mention only the most noted, for example, Galicia, Spain;
Hildesheim, Saxony, beyond Mt. Maurice; in the Harz forest at Stolberg;
among the Chatti between the towns of Aldedorf and Eschuega not far
from the citadel of Pilstein; among the Thuringians in Northusa where
there are mountains of gypsum and in the same district near Gotha
where it is mined on Mt. Seberg; in Misena between Sala and Jena, a
town of Thuringia where many wide veins are found in the mountains. It
occurs in Italy at Thuriae, Thessaly, Perrhaebia and Thesprotia toward
Tymphaea; in Cyprus where it is mined after a thin crust of earth is
removed. It occurs in Phoenicia, Syria and Caesarian Mauritania where,
if I am not mistaken, the port of Gypsaria takes its name from this
mineral.
Gypsum
varies in color. It is found white in many places but the whitest comes
from Northusa and Hildesheim where it resembles ivory. It also occurs
grayish-white at Hildesheim; gray covered with black spots like the
Rochlicens marble, in Misena near Sala; and gray in Northusa where it
occurs in abundance. Light red and green varieties are also found in
Misena.
The
luster of gypsum is variable. Some twinkles like stars such as that
commonly in the form of lumps; some glistens like marble such as the
grayish-white material from Hildesheim and the light red from Misena;
some is translucent such as the material which comes occasionally from
Galicia. The mineral also has a variable form. The light red from
Misena and the gray with black spots occurs in lumps. The gray from
Northusa occurs in crusts while the white and green from Misena occurs
as cleavages resembling sal ammoniac. Although all gypsum has a
certain hardness, as I have mentioned, that found in Thuringia between
Northusa and Elder and in Saxony in the district of Hildesheim is soft
and resembles sugar and has more the appearance of an earth than a
stone. This is so
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