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NATURAL HISTORY
OF
ANCIENT AND MODERN GEMS.
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ACHATES : Á÷Üôçò : Agate and Jasper.
Theophrastüs in
his notice of the gems used for signets (31) has : " A handsome stone,
too, is the Achates, brought from the river of that name (the Drillo)
in Sicily, and is sold at a high price." But Pliny observes (xxxvii.
54) : " The Achates was anciently in high estimation ; now in none at
all. Found, at first, in Sicily on the banks of a river so called, but
afterwards in a great number of other places, exceeding in size, and
fruitful in varieties."
Sicily,
as Castollani informs me, continues to supply the Neapolitan lapidaries
with abundance of Agates and Jaspers of every kind. Assyria, likewise,
furnished »the Greeks with Agates in the times of Dionysius Periegotes.
from the bed of the Choaspes, washed down from the mountains by the
winter-rains. Of the Malwa mines, the most productive of all, a
detailed account will be given in its appropriate place under Onyx. But
as regards curiosity, the most astonishing workshop of Dame Nature for
the production of these stones, in endless and fantastic variety, is to
be seen in the desert valley, some seven miles distant from Cairo,
popularly believed the original bed at the Nile. Besides these gems
that lie about in the shape
(G)
B
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