14	ÍATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
	ALABANDICUS : Almandine : Precious Garnet. "Gabnet" Lessing conjectures to be an Italian corruption of " Garamanticus," an inferior kind of the Carbunculus according to Pliny's classification ; but a much less far­fetched derivation presents itself, viz., that the common gem has borrowed its present name (Anglicised from Grenat ; Granato) from the Granaticus specified by Mar-bodus as early as the 11th century. This was the Eed Hyacinthus of the Romans, so called from the resemblance of its colour to the crimson juice of the pomegranate. For stones of the same colour were promiscuously classed under one head by the ignorance of the Middle Ages (unacquainted with even the ancient test of comparative hardness), whence has arisen that strange interchange of names between ancient and modern precious stones so perplexing to ever}' mineralogist. But in the present instance the confusion is the more excusable, seeing that every variety of the Eed Hyacinthus (Euby) has an exact counterpart in colour amongst the various kinds of Garnets, and in many cases they can only be distinguished from each other through hardness, specific gravity, original crystallisation, and other properties not obvious to the eye, till lately the sole cri­terion. The Father of Mineralogy, Theophrastus, evidently is describing several very different stones under the head of "Áíèñáî (18) ; for although his first kind, "brought from Carthage and Massilia, blood-red, but like a live coal when held against the sun, and of extreme value, so that a very