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Sandaster, Aventurine

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SANDASTER.
271
Nothing now coming from India, or employed in jewelry, corresponds to this obscure account (Pliny himself had evidently never seen the stone) so well as the Matrix of Opal, a compact Serpentine of a dark brown colour, and filled with minute Opals of extraordinary lustre, mimicking indeed, to a fanciful eye, the stars that gem the ebon brow of night. The exceptional tenderness and fragility of the imprisoned Opals seems unmistakably referred to by the remark of Ismenias above cited. This beautiful substance cut into thin slabs, their value proportionate to the number of Opals they contained, was formerly much in fashion for the tops of snuff-boxes, and similar trinkets. The matrix itself being a decomposed serpentine is extremely fragile, and therefore is cut into such plaques with much difficulty ; another point of resemblance to the above-given character of the Sandaster. Its natural colour is light yellow, but, before use, it is soaked in oil and baked, which besides rendering its texture more compact, turns it into a rich dark-brown, marvellously enhancing the lustre of the little Opal-stars twinkling over its surface.
The name Sandaster sounds like a Persian epithet, and appears to be corrupted from Saan-Aster, the " Royal Fire." Pliny notices that it was used by the Chaldeans in their religious offices, in virtue of the stars it contained. Another stone was often confounded with it from the similarity of its name merely, viz., the Sandaresus, or Sandaresion, also an Indian export. But this was of an apple or olive green (some species of the Jaspis therefore), and of no value.
The Lumachella marble has in one respect a strong claim to represent the Sandaster : its ground being dusky, and so far bearing out the comparison of the ancient mineral to the Anthracitis ; but the fires blazing so wonderfully within its darkness assume the curved forms of the broken
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