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Naxium, Emery

Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 384 Naxium, Emery Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
192                  NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
Although the use of this mineral is coeval with the first invention of gem-engraving, which indeed in its proper sense cannot be effected without its aid, yet the earliest extant mention of it by a specific name is that made by Dioscorides (a contemporary of the Triumvirs), who has (v. 165), " The Smyris is a stone with which gem-engravers polish the gems." Theophrastus (44) mentions the same use of the mineral, but appears not to have had any dis­tinctive denomination for it, his words merely being, "And again, the stone wherewith they engrave signets is the same as that of which whetstones are made, or else similar to it, and the best kind is brought from Armenia."
The very chapter in which Theophrastus had given some details of the process is unfortunately one of the most corrupt and mutilated in the whole treatise ; but it may be gathered from what remains that he expresses his surprise at the fact that the substance in question can be cut up and shaped by a steel tool, and yet can bite upon gems that the steel will not touch.
¢êüíáé with the Greeks, as Cotes with the Latins, were terms used indifferently to denote the agent with which steel tools were sharpened and " hard stones "* engraved, in­asmuch as a piece of compact Emery was employed in both
* ' Hard stones ' is the technical term in the lapidary's art for all the species which resist cutting by a steel tool, however hard its temper.
Murrhina, China-Agate Page of 384 Naxium, Emery
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