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Lyncurium, Jacinth

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LYNCURIUM.
161
Amber,* it nowhere existed at all in his time, and that the whole tale was a fiction. But Theophrastws knew Amber too well to make so ignorant a mistake, in fact he proceeds to describe it accurately enough in the next chapter, stating its most obvious properties, and informing us that the Greeks got it from Liguria, i. e. from the Celts the nearest to them. Besides, the coldness of the substance in his Lyncurium, and its being used for intagli, prove that Theophrastus is describing an amber-coloured stone : for real Amber is remarkably warm to the touch, and much too soft and brittle to be used for engraving on. Pliny rejected the account without due examination, partly disgusted by the ridiculous story of its production ; partly because the stone known by that name to Theophrastus, was then reckoned amongst the Chrysolithi by the Romans.
Epiphanius (Iäguriiis) suspected that the Áíãóøéïí of the Septuagint, of which he could find no account in any Greek mineralogist, was the Hyacinthus of his own times, on the ground that so important a stone could not have been omitted by Moses ; and here we find the first germ of the subsequent confusion of two very different things. Jerome writing to Flavilla makes the same remark and in almost the same words. Isidorus, however, correctly ex­plains "Ligurius" as synonymous with Lyncurium, abbre­viating the words of Theophrastus.
There can be no doubt that the gem described by the latter author is our Jacinth (Zircon) the yellow Jargoon.t
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