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Batrachites, Toadstone

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46
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
tion of their origin is, that they were the bony emboss· plates lining the palate or the jaws, and serving instead of teeth to a fossil fish, an arrangement observable in thai recent representatives of the same species.*
Pliny indeed includes in his alphabetical list (though with frequent sneers at the credulity or roguery f of hia authorities) numerous " stones of virtue " generated within the viscera of various animals, viz., the Alectoria, like at crystal, as big as a bean, found in the belly of a cock, "by the virtue of which thoy pretend that Milo of Crotonal gained his reputation for being invincible." Medieval naturalists added that this stone prevented the wearer from ever feeling thirst, and that the capon containing the fatal treasure was betrayed by his never drinking with his food like other fowls. There is no doubt that crystalline stones are often found in a cock's gizzard, as fowls pick up anything shining in preference to other gravel, for which reason in Brazil their gizzards sometimes contain diamonds.' The sole diamond ever discovered in Europe, namely, that obtained some years back in Wicklow, Ireland, is supposed by Prof. Miller to have been thus transported thither by some bird of passage. It was picked up in the bed of a] rivulet, and sold, instead of a pearl, to a resident lady, who was accustomed to buy the mussel-pearls from the finders at the fixed rate of one penny each. This theory of its transportation bears upon the singular fact that the mi-gratory pigeons caught at certain seasons about Gibraltar are sometimes found to have particles of gold-dust sticking to their feet, reminiscences of their scrapings
* I have at last had the satisfaction of verifying this by the in- spection of the part of such a jaw-bone from the Green-sand formation, still thickly studded with many such bosses, some the identical hemi­spheres in size and nature to bo seen set in rings, diminishing down into others no larger than a mustard-seed.
t " Magorum mendacia."
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