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Naxium, Emery

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198                NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
been fashioned out of stones : and the stones again have been fashioned to their object by means of others of harder texture. The recent discoveries amongst the Lake-dwelling of the original Celtic population inhabiting Switzerland have supplied abundant illustrations of the method (heretofore a mystery to all who considered the matter) by which the axes and chisels of Serpentine and Schist were first shaped out of the block by sawing with a sharp edge of flint ; a mineral, it must be remarked en passant, not indigenous, but imported from Gaul for the purpose. The hammer-heads of the same locality also furnish examples of the operation of the primitive drill in their neatly-bored helve-holes,, supposed to have been worked out by the continued rotation of a cylindrical flint assisted by sharp sand. The unfinished specimens disclose the curious contrivance by which this borer, whatever its nature, was made hollow so as to leave a core for itself in the block to which it was applied, and effectually to obviate its shifting its position.
Now, the historians of the conquest of Mexico particu­larise, as a thing very remarkable, that the natives, though at that time well acquainted with the use of cutting-instru­ments made of hard-tempered bronze, employed nothing except flakes of Obsidian for sculpturing the reliefs in Alabaster and other calcareous stones, in such great request for the decoration of their buildings. Such cutting-agents, like the flint-saws of the primitive Swiss, could only produce their effect by means of continuous rubbing, not by impact ; in other words, they acted precisely in the same way in which the " Armenian stone " worked out the mi­nute designs upon the harder gems to which it was applied by the Babylonian seal-engravers. From carving a hard coarse stone to carving one that was fine and precious, but not more refractory to incision, was a very natural -
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