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Corallium, Coral

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102
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
sea-weeds, which the issuing gore turned to stone, attributes to the Coral a long list of the most transcendental virtues bestowed upon it by Minerva. It baffled all witchcraft, counteracted poisons, protected from danger of tempests in sea-voyages, and from robbers in land-journeys, and, mixed in powder with the seed-corn, secured the growing crops from damage of thunderstorms, blight, caterpillars, or locusts. These notions were embraced to their fullest extent by the mediaeval philosophers, as the section on " Coral" in Marbodus proves.
On this account, Coral beads are often to be found in the jewels of the Middle Ages in the same manner as the most precious gems, and evidently equally valued. The small pointed branches, mounted with a ring at one end for sus­pension, so extensively manufactured at Naples, as every tourist must have noticed, are still in request there as amulets. Ferdinand I. devoutly believed in their virtue, and frequently pointed this minute defender against the person whose malignant influence (malocchio) he suspected. Phalli carved in Coral (the Neapolitan branch being merely their modern and decorous representative) are worn yet round the necks of the Roman females as a cure for sterility.
It is not anywhere mentioned that the ancients ever employed Coral for glyptic purposes, either in relief or intaglio ; although a " Head of Chrysippus, in high relief," is quoted as antique in the Catalogue of the Orleans Cabi­net. The subject, however, as well as the material, makes me suspect that this was rather a work of the Eenaissance, the engravers of which period frequently cut the thicker pieces into Camei, but more especially into statuettes, skil­fully availing themselves of the natural disposition of the stem and its branches to form the body and limbs in the attitudes required by the design.
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