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Molochites, Malachite

Magnes, Loadstone Page of 384 Molochites, Malachite Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
176                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
MOLOCHITES: Ìïëü÷á?: Green Jasper : Malachite.
It is difficult to discover what stone Pliny designates by this name ; but that it was not our Malachite (Green Car­bonate of Copper) is sufficiently evident from his words (xxxvii. 36) : " The Molochites is not transparent, being of a closer and coarser green than the Smaragdus (spissina virens et crassius), obtaining its name from its mallow-leaf colour ; praised for making good impressions of the seal, and used as an amulet for children, on account of the virtue innate therein against all the dangers to which they are liable. It is produced in Arabia." Our Malachite was his Smaragdus Medicus, "found of greater dimensions than any other of the sort, of a wavy pattern, representing poppies or birds' feathers, &c, and sometimes resembling the Lapis-lazuli." (The same piece of Malachite has occasionally one half an unmixed blue.) Now, the description of the Molochites as of a close deep-green colour, is entirely op­posed to the notion of a stone where the surface is so curiously variegated with light and dark shades, as in the Malachite. Besides, the latter is much too friable a sub­stance to serve for intagli,—nay, more, to be in request for that purpose, an inference to be drawn from the expression " laudata." But these characters apply admirably to a certain pale-green Jasper, perfectly opaque, and of a dead surface, in which admirable intagli sometimes occur, notably
Magnes, Loadstone Page of 384 Molochites, Malachite
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