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Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems

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138
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
idea for his pretty epigram (ix. 746), " Upon a Herd of Cattle engraved in a Jaspis," where they all seem alive, and are confined within a golden fold to keep them from straying beyond the grassy mead. And Archias, for another (ix. 750), " If you saw upon the finger these cows and this Jaspis, you would imagine that the former were breathing creatures, the latter a field of grass."
All these details prove that the name in its primary acceptation signified our Plasma, a Calcedony coloured green by oxide of Nickel, the better quality of which was distinguished as the " Prasites," " of the colour of ver­digris," by Theophrastus, and as the " Prasius " by Pliny The translucency of the material is apparent from Pliny's remark that the finer sort were set à jour in rings—not backed, as was the rule for most gems ; also from their being imitated by glass-pastes, to be detected by " their throwing out their lustre instead of retaining it within their substance." A defect of the species, noticed as very general, was the sal, clearly the whitish flaws so often disfiguring the Plasma.
From all this it appears that the ancient idea of the Jaspis was exactly the opposite to the modern of the Jasper ; the latter now designating a class of stones always opaque, and, in fact, corresponding to the Achates of the Romans.
Subsequently, other translucent colours were admitted under this denomination ; Dioscorides enumerating, besides the Emerald-like sort, a second resembling Crystal, a third Cerulean, and a fourth, the Terebinthizon, " like the Callais." But Pliny, writing a few years later, widely extends the list, seemingly making it include several kinds ot coloured Quartz and Calcedony: one, the most esteemed, showing a tinge of purple, another of rose-colour, a third of the Emerald. Again, another resembled the Sard;
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