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Sardius, Sard

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SARDIUS.
279
loured red or yellow by oxide of iron, and its superior Oriental variety the Sard, hold the first place in the list of substances employed by the ancient engravers, presenting us, alone, with as many intagli cut upon them as all the other species of gems collectively.
The Carnelian is found abundantly in many parts of Europe, wherever the shingle on the coast is composed of flint-pebbles, or in the beds of mountain-torrents of similar formation, and scattered together with Agates over the Egyptian Desert. It is of the same nature as the latter stone, only differing in the arrangement of its colours, and seems to be what Pliny distinguishes from the rest of the species by the name of Sard-achates, just as his Leuc-achates is the Calcedony, or "White Carnelian.
In this dull red, earthy, and softer species are the most ancient intagli usually cut, the Egyptian and Etruscan scarabei, and the greater part of the other ring-stones engraved in Etruria. The beds of the Tuscan rivers fur­nished a plentiful supply of this material; even at the present day the shingle of the brook Mugnone,* near Florence, yields Carnelians in great abundance. But the beautiful transparent species, the true Sard, came from India alone. Already (b.c. 400) Ctesias, in his ' Indica,' mentions the " great mountains out of which are dug the Sardö, the Onyx, and other gems," lying fifteen days' journey from the sandy desert (between Cutch and Moultan) ; and again, the " mount Sardö, and the mountains where the gem Sardö is dug" (Ind. § 5). And Plato, with a tradi­tional reminiscence of India in his mind (Phsedo, p. HO), describes the " True World " (Paradise) as a region where
* Whither the simpleton Calandrino, according to Boccaccio's tale (viii. 3) goes with his tormentors Bruno and Buffalmacco in quest of the gem Heliotrope, that was to give him the power of becoming invisible at will.
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