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Lapis Nephriticus Jade

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204                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
virtue; a piece no larger than a half-thaler selling at 100 crowns, whilst a mass of sufficient dimensions to make a good-sized cup, then in the hands of the imperial jeweller, was valued at 1600 thalers.*
The same author states that it was then brought from New Spain, and quotes Monardes (a Spanish physician, whose treatise was published in 1567) as to the ancient estimation in which the natives had held it : " The Indians wear the Nephrite, shaped into various figures, some ot fishes, some like birds' heads or parrots' beaks, others spherical like rosary-beads, but all of them perforated, because from time immemorial they wear them as pendants, against all diseases of the kidneys and pains in the stomach, in which complaints these ornaments are highly esteemed for their efficacy." De Boot again mentions (under Sma· ragdoprasius} that the West Indians, the Caribs, wrought that particular stone, which some held to be the only genuine Nephrite, into a cylinder, enlarged at one end, oi the size of the little finger, which was worn by their chiefs as a badge of rank, through a hole pierced in the lower lip. He also asserts a very singular thing, that the true Nephrite was then found in Spain and also in Bohemia ; a fact which he adds was but little known, because the ignorant lapi­daries mistook it for the Smaragdoprase, or for the green Jasper. Strange to say this most obdurate material has held the same place amongst certain barbarian races, though the most remotely situated from each other, that was occupied by the Onyx amongst the most refined nations of antiquity. The Mexicans, when first discovered, employed the Jade as their chief jewel, before the Emerald, and had
* De Laet mentions having seen in England a mass as hig as a man's head, of a milky greenish colour ; lately brought from the river Amazon, where this stone was found in the greatest abundance. The owner asked 50Z. sterling for it : a vast sum in James I.'s days.
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