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CHRYSOPRASIUS.
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91
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position
as the Prase, it differs greatly from that stone in outward appearance,
by reason of its opacity and much more agreeable and more uniform tint
of green, besides its greatly superior hardness.
Although
antique works do not occur in our Chrysoprase —a necessary consequence
from the fact that the only locality producing it lay without the
limits of Roman enterprise—yet a mineral much resembling it, though
with somewhat of a bluish cast, is said to be found sometimes set in
old Egyptian jewelry alternately with bits of Lapis-lazuli. Intagli
also are known upon this same substance, which has, on account of its
colour and slight translucency, been mistaken occasionally for the
Turquois. One in my pssession bears a most singular type, Barbelo, the
androgynous " Mother of Creation " of the Phoenicians, with the
appropriate attributes of the snail (salacity) and the butterfly
(life). The substance may be defined as a blue Plasma ; it contains the
peculiar black specks that characterise the species. This antique kind
may with some probability be considered the cerulean Jaspis brought
from the Thermodon.
Some
such stone as this may have been the Omphax, reckoned by Theophrastus
(30) amongst the commoner ring-stones. The word, primarily signifying
an unripe grape, could only have applied to a gem equally opaque and
green, with a certain bluish bloom upon it. It is strange, indeed, that
no Greek intagli are now extant in any gem at all answering to this
description, for Theophrastus puts it in the same list as the
Carbuncle, Sard, and Amethyst (Garnet), whence one would conclude it to
have then been equally in general use. Furlanus understands by it an
inferior sort of Beryl, De Laet says " de quo nihil certi possum
affirmare." A recent writer is certain that our pale, uniformly-tinted
Prase is signified : but the trans-
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