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Alabastrites

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ALABASTRITES.
25
his sumptuous mausoleum at Cairo is exclusively con­structed : a piece of extravagance beyond the ambition of even Nero.*
It is singular that Pliny should have noticed no other quarries of this marble as then worked besides those in Asia and Egypt, for the mountain on which Volterra is built yields large blocks of a variety richer in point of colour than the Oriental, a warm brown variegated with lemon vortices : his omission is the more unaccountable as the stone had been much in use with the Etruscans, as their sepulchral monuments remain to attest. The mag­nificent and huge vases, now exported from Tuscany, belong to the Volterran fabrique. It is indeed true that the Volterra stone dili'ers chemically from the Oriental, being a Sulphate of Lime or Compact Gypsum ; but such an analytical distinction would have had no significance in ancient mineralogy. Thus the Lygdinus subsequently mentioned as dug up in Paros, but in small slabs, never exceeding the measure required for a dish or a bowl, and equal to the Egyptian stone as a preservative of perfumes, appears to have been Compact Gypsum, from its distinctive character adduced of superlative whiteness, " candoris eximii." The fact that some of the sorts were burnt for lime and used in plasters (as depilatories ?) also indicates that the Onyx-marble included both the Carbonate and the Sulphate of Lime. The French clearly distinguish the two species, con-
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