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Zmilampis, Cat's-eye

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ZMILAMPIS.
321
material. To the same age and love for glyptic double-entendres is due the Hope " Mexican Sun-Opal," 1x3/4 inch in size, richly lustred with shades of red, green, and blue, and as appropriately converted into a head of Phoebus.
The Italian name for our Cat's-eye is Belocchio, evidently a corruption of the Beli Oculus of the Romans ; but this descriptive epithet has been transferred to the Cat's-eye on no sufficient grounds, the Beli Oculus (Baal's-eye) ha\'ing been merely some brightly-shaded variety of the Eye-onyx : (55) "for in it a transparent white belt encloses a black pupil, having a golden colour shining out from the centre ; —on account of its appearance consecrated to the supreme god of Assyria." These terms make it certain that three distinct colours were necessary to compose the Beli Oculus, whereas the Cat's-eye presents one uniform tint, the pupil being formed by the more reflexion of light, and shifting about according to the angle of inclination of the surface.
The Beli Oculus of De Boot's age still retains its ancient meaning. He describes it as a minute Eye-onyx of sove­reign virtue for all diseases of the eyes (on the strength of its name, no doubt), the mode of employing it being to place the gem under the lid, and allow it to work its way into the corner.
Pliny furthermore distinguishes, by significant Greek epithets, several varieties of the Eye-onyx, as the Leucoph-thalmus, of a fiery red enclosing the figure of an eye in opaque white and black (for the pupil) : and the same stone seems again designated as the Lycophthalmus ( Wolf's-eye), but presenting four distinct colours, a fiery red en­closing one the colour of blood, in the centre of which was a black spot surrounded by a circle of opaque white, precisely representing the same organ in the wolf. The Triophthalmus, produced with the Onyx, presented the figure of a triple human eye.
(G)
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