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Prasius, Plasma

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266                   NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
Moss-Agates. There is, however, a pale-green variety, of which antique ring-stones are occasionally found, made perfectly free from all such blemishes and remarkably transparent. Such are specimens of the true Prasius of the ancients, their tint exhibiting an exact resemblance to the colour of a leek. These approximate closely to the true Emerald in their oily, soft tint, though they have not its peculiar lustre ; and such were without doubt the Smaragdi, which the Greeks speak of as being engraved for signets. Pliny indicates the species exactly, by noticing that one kind was " horrent with drops of blood," our Heliotrope ; and the third, marked by three opaque white lines. This last is the same stone as that described by him under " Jaspis " as universally worn for an amulet in the East ; resembling the Emerald and surrounded by a white line passing through its middle, and therefore called the Grammatias ; as that with more than· one line was termed Polygrammos. I have met with a Gnostic amulet on a stone exactly answering to this description of the Grammatias ; and, conversely, by its means have identified the true Prase beyond all possibility of doubt.
But amongst the numerous varieties of the Plasma some are to be occasionally seen which distinguish themselves from the rest by the purity of their substance, and peculiar shade of light green slightly tinged with yellow. They strongly resemble the Prehnite (a combination of silica, alumina, lime), a stone as hard as the Garnet, and found in considerable botryoidal masses in the Tyrol as well as at the Cape of Good Hope. As we know the Romans obtained Rock-crystal from the Alps, there is no reason why they should not have discovered and made use of the Prehnite also : its colour and hardness would have highly recommended it to a people such lovers of green-coloured gems.
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