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252 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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the
Emperor Claudius for no other cause than the carrying of one in his
bosom during a trial. This embracing together of the serpents, and
their thus productive union, seems to be the cause why foreign nations
have made the Caduceus entwined with snakes, one of the emblems of
peace ; for it is not the custom to represent the snakes on the
Caduceus as having crests " (i. e. not as the serpents called by the Romans " draconos," the sacred reptiles above all others, the Egyptian Agathodajmons).
These
details show how much in the wrong antiquaries are in giving the name
of Ovum Anguinum, or Druid's Bead, to the large spheres of variegated
glass (often exhiÂbiting the most vivid colours, arranged in elegant
wavy patterns equal to any traditionally reproduced by the Murano
factories) that formed the central ornament of Roman-British or Saxon
necklaces. But the object seen his Pliny was evidently some natural
production, and his description applies better to a large fossil
echinus than to anything else. Perhaps some lingering traces of the
ancient fable may be the cause why a species of the recent shell yet
bears the popular name of the Mermaid's Egg. This explanation too is
corroborated by Mediœval tradition ; for De Boot actually figures two
fossil echini as specimens of what in his day was accounted the true
Ovum Anguinum, and prized as an antidote against poison ; but he
sagaciously adds that they do not agree with Pliny's description. The
longitudinal septa of the shell were construed into as many lizards
attached to its surface, and are so depicted in his woodcut.
Singularly
enough he notices that the travelling quacks were in the habit of
selling to the simple Bohemians, as the veritable Serpent's Egg, and
generated according to all the circumstances of the old Druidical
legend, a thing hence called Buchanek, or the Breath-stone (lapis Spiritalis).
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