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Alabastrites

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22                   NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
ALABASTRITES.
This is the stone now known as the Oriental Alabaster (Carbonate of Lime), as is manifest from Pliny's descrip­tion (xxxvi. 12) of the best sort, the Carmanian, " of a honey-colour, variegated with spiral spots (vortices) and not transparent ; for the colour of horn, or fatty white, or anything resembling glass in it, are considered blemishes." To this the name of Onyx was originally given from the resemblance of its layers and tints to the shades in the finger-nail of a "well-bred person," to quote Epiphanius. This last writer mentions a conjecture of some, that its formation was due to the dropping of water : in which they were altogether in the right, for it is identical in constitution with Stalagmite. But this same ignorant transcriber concludes his article on the Onyx with a hopeless confusion between the marble and the gem of the same name. To avoid such ambiguity, the Romans finally restricted the term Onyx to the gem so called at present : one kind of which, the Agate-onyx (made up of layers of opaque and transparent white), exactly resembles that regularly stratified variety of this marble, the Albâtre-onyx of the French. The Onyx-marble now lost its ancient title, and became the Alabastrites, from its being chiefly employed as the best material for the Alabastra, or perfume jars, shaped like minute amphora, but " without handles," as their Greek appellation signifies. Such
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