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ACHATES.
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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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