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Onyx, Nicolo

Onyx, Nicolo Page of 384 Onyx, Nicolo Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
222
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
and as large as the head of an actual tom-cat : * the surface marbled .with shades of the purest black, white, and blue, forming spots and meanders fully verifying Pliny's expres­sion, " colore inennarrabili et in unum redounte concentum suavitate grata." But in fact the Agate and the Onyx are, as already remarked, the same substance, only differing in the arrangement of the layers, which in the Agate are wavy and often concentric, whilst in the Onyx they are placed parallel to each other.
Agathe-onyx is the name appropriately given by the Trench to that variety in which the upper layer is opaque and white, the lower transparent, and either colourless or a pale yellow. This is the material most frequently em­ployed for modern camei, being the production of Europe, and often termed the German Onyx, whereas the ancients preferred almost exclusively for that purpose the opaque and rich-coloured strata of the Indian Sardonyx. Revers-ing the rule with modern camei, in the antique the relief is usually rendered in pearly white upon a black ground. There is also a substance closely resembling the Agathe-onyx in appearance, though much softer when tested by the file, and often to be met with employed in Italian camei of the Eenaissance, the Albâtre-onyx of the French. This is nothing better than a variety of the Oriental Alabaster, with the difference that the opaque and the transparent layers, instead of intermingling in circles and curls, are arranged in well-defined horizontal layers. The Italians have also skilfully forged the antique Onyx by cutting out a relief in the white lava from Monte Ipomeo, so muck
* The Opal eyes, which impart such life and feroci ty, wer:, Blumenbach, inserted by J. Pichler. The story current in the British Museum is that this head capped Tippoo Sahib's tent-pole; a tradition quite at variance with Blumenbaeh's notice, for J. Pichler died in 1791, and Seringapatam was not taken before May 1, 1799.
Onyx, Nicolo Page of 384 Onyx, Nicolo
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