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Zmilampis, Cat's-eye

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320                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
Ben Mansur has : " It is asserted that the Cat's-eye is found in the Jacut-mines, and is formed out of the same sub­stance." The latter were in the island of Saharan, lying 40 parasangs behind the island of Ceylon : and the only source of the gem (except a lately reported one near Cairo) then known. A perfect gem is yet of considerable value in Europe, but the Hindoos admire it above all precious stones after the Diamond. Even higher was its estimation with the Arabians of the Caliphate ; Teifashi remarking that of all precious stones none fetched so high a price as the Cat's-eye; adding that one Ismael Salamita paid 700 " deniers of the elephant " for such a gem, and disposed of the same for double that amount to the Prince of Yeman.
The Hindoo love for this more curious than beautiful gem sprung from the belief in a certain inestimable influ­ence inherent in its nature, that of never allowing the wealth of its owner to decline, but on the contrary, of stimulating it to perpetual increase. No wonder then that Garcias should note that a Cat's-eye valued in Por­tugal at 90 gold-pieces was sold to his knowledge in India for 600. In Europe at the time its current value was the same as that of the Opal : now far below.*
Amongst the Marlborough Gems one of the most curious is a singular conversion of a monster Cat's-eye, 1-1/2 inch high, into a lion's head admirably carved out in full relief. The play of colours imparts to the grim mask a vivid reality of life and fury, rendering it a most successful achievement of the school (the Cinque-cento) that produced it, whose taste, ever stimulated by the love of the grotesque, revelled in similar analogies between the subject and the
* This old common Cat's-eye must not be confounded with the Chryso-beryl-Cat's-eye : which is the Cymophane, " floating light " (p. 38;, cut so as to contract its iris from a circle into a long oval, and which equals the Sapphire in value.
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