200                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
	The circumstance distinctly specified that the carvings in the harder rocks were done with the same instruments as those used in working the precious stones, affords a singu­lar confirmation to the theory already quoted, that the Egyptians effected their stupendous works in similar ma­terials by the application of the same means. And again, to complete the analogy between the processes of the two nations, the use of Obsidian flakes in carving the softer stones is the counterpart of the Egyptian use of flint in incising their steaschist scarabei,: an instrument not merely to be conjectured from its traces left in its productions, but indicated by the express declaration of Herodotus, that the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes had their arrows pointed with the same stone that they used for engraving signets. And what this stone was is placed out of doubt by the discovery of flint-headed arrows in Egyptian tombs. There is a Eabbinical tradition testifying to the extreme antiquity of the employment of the Smyris in gem-engrav­ing. Moses, they tell, engraved the stones of the Eationale by means of the blood of the worm Samir, so powerful a solvent as to subdue the hardest gem, and leave a hollow wherever the characters had been traced therewith. In after ages, when Solomon was about to build the Temple with stones untouched by the tool, the source whence Moses had obtained the Samir had been lost in the darkness of antiquity. But Solomon's wisdom was equal to the emer­gency, and speedily suggested a method for its recovery. He inclosed an ostrich-chick in a glass vase and set a watch upon it ; the parent-bird, finding it impossible to break the vase by force, flew off to the desert, and returned with a supply of the wondrous reptile, the application of which speedily dissolved the glass and released her young one. By repeating the stratagem, a sufficient supply of the potent