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Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems

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146                  NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
Pliny's date, he nowhere expressly mentions it, though it seems to be intended by some of his descriptions of 8 cursorily mentioned as red. Amongst these the Corallis has, in my opinion, the best claim to be considered its ancient representative : for " it resembled vermilion in colour, and was produced in India and Syene." The last would explain its frequent occurrence in Egyptian amulets and symbols, such as eyes, fingers, horses' heads, &c. This Syene Eed Jasper is pale but uniform in tint, and at first sight would easily be mistaken for unpolished Coral.
This sort may be the " single-coloured Achates " of Pliny. which boiled in oil communicated to it a vermilion colour: indeed Orpheus (609) terms one variety of the Achates ìéëôïðÜñçïò " vermilion-cheeked." It was not the Hœma-chates, for that is defined by Solinus as "blushing with spots of blood," and therefore was the translucent Blood-agate as distinguished from the opaque, uniformly tinted, Eed Jasper. Neither was it Pliny's stone Haematites (xxxvi 25), for that was a loadstone, and thereby pointed out as the magnetic iron-ore still retaining the name. With more reason may it be found in the Haematitis of Theophrastus (37), reckoned by him amongst the cheaper gems, the Fossil Ivory, Prasitis, and Sapphirus ; and which he de­scribes as dry and composed, as it were, out of clotted blood, having also a variety of a paler tint. Pliny adds to this, that it was found both in Numidia and in Arabia ; and as he, too, classes it amongst the gems (60), the Haematitis probably was no other than our Eed Jasper.
But his Haematites, the mineral " lapis," as distinguished from the gem in another passage (xxxvi. 37), was a red oxide of iron, very serviceable in all diseases of the eye, and in the treatment of dysentery, and which Orpheus (050) fables to have owed its origin to the blood of Uranus which fell to the earth when he was mutilated by the
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