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Obsidianum, Obsidian

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210
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
ever, in the Praun Collection a Cock-Chimaera, on a large Obsidian, with a Gnostic design on the reverse. The Black Agate, much employed by the Roman engravers of his and the following century for the representation of masks, may be distinguished from this stone by the character that, however dark its colour, it always exhibits a reddish translucency when held up against a strong light ; the Obsidian, on the contrary, where translucent, is colourless. Pliny had seen figures in full relief (of Augustus) sculp­tured in it, the substance attaining sufficient dimensions to allow of such employment;* and the same emperor had dedicated in the Temple of Concord, as being something wonderful, four elephants cut out of Obsidian; their size, however, is not stated. Tiberius " restored to the worship of the people of Heliopolis " a statue of Menelans, which bad been found amongst the property of a certain former governor of Egypt (who appears to have appropriated it in the Verrine fashion), which Pliny quotes as a proof that the stone had been used in sculpture long before its pre­tended discovery by Obsidius. According to Xenocrates it was found not merely in Ethiopia, but in India, in Sam-niurn, and in Spain, upon the Atlantic coast : and in this the Greek was doubtless correct, for it is commonly found in the vicinity of all volcanoes, the chief deposits known
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