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Obsidianum, Obsidian

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OBSIDIANUM.
211
at present being in the Lipari Isles and under Mount Hecla.
In Pliny's time it was largely imitated in glass, employed as a material for plates and dishes. A similar black glass was a favourite medium in the last century for making pastes after antique gems, which, renders it often difficult to distinguish the antique engravings in the real Obsidian from these modern fabrications, unless by the test of the file. For Obsidian, notwithstanding its vitreous nature, possesses the hardness of the Garnet, and its splinters will deeply scratch into the surface of any paste, for which property Pliny recommends them as the surest test for the detection of the latter mode of imposition.
There was a curious pedantic error prevalent in the same century of calling all antique pastes Obsidian, merely because Pliny had mentioned the imitation of this parti­cular stone in glass. But Pastes, generically, are termed by him " vitreœ gemmae, used for setting in the rings of the populace" (xxxv. 30).
Orpheus (282) prescribes " the stern Opsian stone " as an ingredient in a curious magical recipe. It was to be mixed with amber, " the tears of the pine," myrrh, and the flaky talc, when the compound would return oracles " concerning all things about to happen, whether good or evil, and give to know whatever thou mayest desire."
The Mexicans are" described by Ximenes, an early Spanish missionary, as making razors and knives out of Obsidian with great dexterity. Holding the block between their two feet, they, with a wooden instrument shaped like a musket-butt, struck off flakes. The modern Indians still manufacture Obsidian arrow-heads by splintering off thin flakes from the mass by means of a peculiar and dexterous pressure with the point of a goat's horn, in a manner that can only be understood by actual inspection. The Celtic
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