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Amethystus, Amethyst

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32                     NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
We cannot resist such an inference if we carefully examine some of the characters given by Pliny of certain varieties of this gem. Thus he describes the Indian as "having the exact tint of the royal purple, and the dyers direct their endeavours to produce the colour, taking this gem for their pattern. For it diffuses a hue softly gentle to the sight, neither does it flash upon the eye like the Carbunculus." Be it remembered that he has already described the best purple as the colour of clotted blood, dark in one aspect, blight red if viewed against the light.* Again, we find " the fourth sort has the colour of wine ; " now Italian wine generally (and more especially that grown about Rome) shows the richest Burgundy colour, than which nothing more accurately expresses the deep hue of the common Pyrope. It is a manifest absurdity to suppose a comparison between the bluish red of our Amethyst and the unmixed red of various shades peculiar to any sort of wine.f Again, his " Amethystus " was exactly counterfeited by staining amber with either alkanet-root, or murex-blood ; both reds with no tinge of blue. The Carbunculus of Pliny was doubtless our Spinel Euby, and to the eye alone (the sole criterion of the ancient lapidary) the Oriental (Siriam) Garnet and the Spinel are almost undistinguishable from
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