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BOOK VI
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113
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color, by some name signifying the color. AVhen a white gem has a black top it is called epimelas and when, like the Median smaragdus, it resembles a poppy it is called meconitcs. On the other hand, when chrysolithvs is cut by a white vein it is called leucochrysos and this name is only given to this one gem since other gems having this white line do not have a golden color. Thus grammatias, polygrammos, mesoleucos and mcsomelas are not in themselves gems nor are perileucos, meconites, epimelas and leucochrysos. Gems
are found in many ways. With us they occur either as if by their own
free will or they are picked out of washed sand or they are dug out of
the mountains. When they occur as if by their own free will they may be
turned up by the plow as are the garnets in the fields of Bohemia and
Lygi-us or exposed by the etesian winds which remove the surrounding
sand as is the case with the smaragdus which the Bactrian horsemen collect into small piles. They may be exposed by torrents as are the sardonyx they gather from the charadrae1 of
India, or they are carried to the banks of rivers together with other
pebbles as are the agates found along the Choaspes river in Persia.
Some project from massive rock as do the crystals of quartz found in
the highest part of Mt. Melibocus which the people of the Harz Wood
call Blochenberg, having changed the letters. By these methods
transparent gems are sought for so widely because they seize the
sparkle of the stars and give it back, by day reflecting the splendor
of the sun, by night the beauty of the moon.
But
the rest, and those more properly called stones, are found by chance.
Having been found in this way a small number are collected but this
requires more labor, especially when the stones are attached to the
rough parent rock. For example, the country people who live on Mt.
Melibocus and in the Alps climb these mountains or hang from ropes in
order to find crystals of quartz. The horsemen of Carmania find their
turquois in moss at the base of cliffs. It adheres lightly to the moss,
not as to the parent rock, as Pliny writes, but as if it had been
placed in it. The sands of springs and rivers are washed for gems.
Garnets are obtained in this way from a spring in Bohemia between the
fortress we call The Royal Watchtower and the town of Plana. The finest
carbunculi and hyacinthi are obtained from a river in Misena above the walled city of Hoestein, five miles from Stolpa. Hyacinthus, with the bluish gray color and unctuousness of jaspis, is mined in Misena near Volchestein. Sometimes another stone called borea is mined from the two mountains of Ligyes near the town of Striga. In India the finest carbunculi are
mined from a mountain on the island of Ceylon. Gems are sometimes found
in veins, stringers or vugs in rocks. Some are found in the actual
heart of a rock, for example, the sard found near Babylon, according to
Pliny. There it was exposed in a stone quarry.
1 A charadra was
a canal built for the purpose of carrying water to a place where it was
used to wash dirt and other waste materials from metals, minerals or
gems.
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