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Amethystus, Amethyst

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AMETHYSTUS.
35
despatched into all parts of Europe to be made up into cheap articles of jewelry. They are also found plentifully about Wicklow, in Ireland. Barbot mentions a crystal of Ame­thyst as recently brought to Paris of the astonishing weight of 65 kilos, (about 140 lbs.). When the gem was in fashion, it was formerly imported largely from the East Indies, and these were light coloured, the purple being shaded un­equally, but extremely lustrous. The · colour of the Ame­thyst can be dispelled by a careful roasting in hot ashes. Hence in the last century, when it was the great desidera­tum with the jewellers to obtain a suite of stones all exactly of the same tint, they were able to bring about this result by subjecting the several pieces to the heat for a greater or less time, until they were all reduced to the same shade of purple. According to modern usage this is the only gem it is allowable to wear in mourning.
The artists of tho Eenaissance eagerly availed themselves of these huge and beautiful crystals to carve them into those fanciful yet elegant vases, so acceptable to the taste of their age. The Parisian Collections offer the choicest specimens of their skill in this line. A cup, shaped as a shell, seven inches long and deep, by six wide, valued at 1800 francs; also an urn eight inches high, fluted and elaborately decorated with engravings, are enumerated in the former treasury of the Crown.
This stone is one of the earliest that figure in the list of talismans, or gems whose native virtues were heightened by the sigil engraved upon them, a superstition still in its infancy in the age of Pliny, when, although the medical virtues of many gems were generally admitted, the doctrine of their supernatural powers was as yet ridiculed by the learned as a figment of the credulous East. Thus under this head Pliny remarks that "the lying Magi hold out that these gems are an antidote to drunkenness, and take
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