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180 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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do
not indeed project, but are embedded in the substance, and that very
often. The material is somewhat recommended also by its agreeable
smell."
Such
a description would appear definite enough to enable a mineralogist to
identify with ease the exact substance intended, nevertheless upon no
one point in the science have so many diverse theories been propounded.
De Boot, after citing the then prevailing notion that the Murrhine
vessels were Chinese porcelain (recently made known by the Portuguese
in his own days), treats it as absurd, and explains the term as
designating the vases of Sardonyx, of which he had seen antique
fragments. In the last century the French archaeologists, headed by
Mariette, adopted the porcelain explanation, and discovered in Pliny's
" purple and white spots " an exact description of the paintings
ornamenting Chinaware ! It is impossible, however, to conceive
anything more preposterous than the supposition that an acute observer
of nature, like Pliny, and with his knowledge of art, could have
mistaken the Chinese drawing, however grotesque, but evidently laid upon the surface by human skill, for the natural spots and veins in a
parti-coloured stone. Old Dom Doublet could have taught Mariette
better, by his apt description of a vase in the Treasury of St. Denys :
" Un calice très exquis, fait d'une très belle Agathe, gaudronné
par dehors ; admirable par la beauté et la variété des couleurs qui s'y
sont trouvées naturellement esparses ça et là en façon de papier marbré.' A comparison affording an undesigned translation of the maculosa murrha, above quoted. But these antiquaries disregarded common sense, being so completely led astray by Martial's " murrhina picta " (a mere poetical allusion to its varied colours), and above all by Propertius with his
** Murrheaque in Partkis pocula coda focis " (iv. 5). "And Murrhine vases baked in Parthian fires."'
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