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Agates, Jet

Agates, Jet Page of 384 Heliotropium, Heliotrope Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
132                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
their subjects how to convert this elegant material into articles of decoration stamped with their own more refined taste ; most interesting examples of which were discovered in two stone coffins found at some depth beneath the principal entrance of S. Gereon, at Cologne, during the repairs going on there in 1840. These are conjectured to have been a complete set of ornaments belonging to a priestess of Cybele, and consist of two hair-bodkins, with heads formed out of pine-cones, almonds (beads), trefoils, bracelets, rings, a half-crotalon with a Medusa's head upon it,·—in all, 26 articles.
The intagli in Jet however, antique and mediaeval, palmed off in such quantities of late years upon English antiquaries, are nothing but. impudent recent forgeries, with no ancient precedents whatsoever.
It is not altogether foreign from this subject to adduce a fact of which few are aware, that the use of Goal for fuel can be traced back to the early times of Greece. Theo-phrastus, treating of the Anthrax (16), has: "But those which are properly named Coals, on account of the use made of them by the luxurious, ignite and burn exactly like charcoal. They are found in Liguria in the same region as the Amber ; and also in the territory of Elis, on the mountain-road to Olympia ; and these are used by the blacksmiths for fuel."
Agates, Jet Page of 384 Heliotropium, Heliotrope
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