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Achates, Agate

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ACHATES.
17
objects, such as chariots, pilasters, and the ornaments put upon horses." All these objects were suggested to the imagination by the singular arrangement of the veins in many of the Jaspers, notably in the " Egyptian Pebble," which frequently presents objects so exactly defined, that it is hardly possible to imagine them the unaided sports of Nature. Thus in the British Museum may be seen the exact portrait of Chaucer in such a pebble; the Strawberry Hill Collection had another of Voltaire; and nume­rous others might be mentioned, equally illusive.3 Epiphanius, however, seems to have derived his account of this stone from a much earlier, Greek source, when the name was as yet re­stricted to one particular species: "The eighth stone; the Agate; this has been supposed to be that called Perileucos, de­scribed under ' Hyacinthus.' It is an admirable gem, some­what blue (or dark) in colour, having externally a white zone,4 like marble or ivory, running round it: this too is found in Scy-thia. And amongst these, there is an Agate having the colour of a lion's-skin ; this powdered and mixed with water, smeared upon the bite of any reptile, counteracts the poison of the scorpion, the viper, and such like things." Isidores also (Origg. xvi. 11) makes but one sort of the Achates: " It is a black stone having in the middle circles of white and black joined together and variegated; resembling the Haematites." And this is again more closely defined by Marbodus as a black stone girt by a white zone, expressing probably the sense of the first part of Epiphanius's description.
In Roman times, when these stones had gone out of fashion for signets, they were in greater request than ever, on account of their medicinal and talismanic virtues. The singular freaks of Nature portrayed upon their surface had readily suggested to the superstitious Persians, the authors of all such notions, some won-
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