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Crystallus, Rock-crystal

Crystallus, Rock-crystal Page of 384 Crystallus, Rock-crystal Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
112
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
and termed the Hyaloeides, which may mean the Beryl, a gem not mentioned by him under that name. For, strangely enough, Garcias ab Horto asserts " that no Crystal at all is found in India, but, on the contrary, the Beryl in large fragments, out of which the natives make both glass and vessels of price." The first part of this statement is altogether erroneous, for Crystal is still brought from India, and in masses of enormous size.
Glass had been carried to such perfection when Pliny wrote as to imitate the Crystal with wonderful exactness, yet, what surprised him, vases of the latter substance had risen in value, instead of declining through this competi­tion. This colourless, transparent glass, approaching as nearly as possible to the true Crystal, was then the most admired. Such perhaps was the material of the two small vases with handles (pterotae), a discovery of Nero's times, which sold for the enormous price of 6000 sesterces (60?.), for Pliny quotes them when speaking of this stone.
The Indians (xxxvii. 20) had discovered the art of forging all the coloured gems, but more especially the Beryl, by staining Crystal. Treatises were extant, says Pliny (75), directing how to stain Crystal so as to pass for the Emerald and other transparent precious stones ; hut he declines to point them out, on the ground that even luxury ought to be protected against fraud; adding that no other mode of cheating in the world was so lucrative. Dutens, however (' Pierres Précieuses,' p. 67), is less scru­pulous; stating that a Crystal made red-hot and plunged repeatedly into the tincture of cochineal becomes a Piuby ; if into tincture of red santal, it takes a deep red tint ; into tincture of saffron, a yellow like the Topaz ; into that of turnsole, it assumes the colour of the Sapphire ; into juice of nerprun, it takes a deep viole like the Amethyst ; and into a mixture of tincture of turnsole and saffron, it be-
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