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Callais, Turquois

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S8                   NATURAL HISTORY OF OEMS.
slings at a distance. This gem constitutes their wealth, and their choicest ornament for the neck and the finger their chief glory, the number each man has knocked down in his lifetime, success in the pursuit being quite a lottery, sometimes the very first shot has brought down several i beautiful stones ; others again have tried for them till old age, without obtaining a single one. The stone is shaped by a cutting instrument (sectura), being too brittle to be worked in any other manner. The best have the colour of the Emerald, whence it is plain that they please with a beauty not their own. No gem is more improved by setting in gold, and gold itself is by no gem so well set off'. The finer sort lose their colour through wetting with oil, grease, or wine; but the inferior retain theirs more permanently. No other stone is so easily imitated in deceptive paste."*
All these particulars indicate a pale green transparent stone, in short, an inferior Peridot, or rather the Peridot itself, as distinguished from our jewellers' Chrysolite, to which it yields considerably in point of hardness. The expression "full of holes and of dross,"is quite inconsistent with the idea of an opaque solid body like the modern Turquois, the generic distinction of which would, besides, certainly not be described as a " pale-green " colour. The Peridot also exhibits the same " extraordinary magnitude," as compared to other gems ; whilst, similarly, from its soft­ness, it is extremely difficult to polish. Its colour, too, evaporates through long exposure to the light. De Boot conjectured that our Aquamarine was intended by the Callaina, but the superior hardness of the former is of itself sufficient to overthrow such an explanation. The notice of
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