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ALABANDICUS.
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ALABANDICUS: Almandine : Precious Garnet.
"Garnet"
Lessing conjectures to be an Italian corruption of " Garamanticus," an
inferior kind of the Carbuncules according to Pliny's classification ;
but it is much more probable that the common gem has borrowed its
present name (Anglicized from Grenat ; Granato) from the Granatin specified
by Marbodus as early as the 11th century: the Red Hyacinths of the
Romans, so called from the resemblance of their colour to the crimson
juice of the pomegranate. For stones of the same colour were
promiscuously classed under one head by the ignorance of the Middle
Ages (unacquainted with even the ancient test of comparative
hardness), whence has arisen that strange interchange of names between
ancient and modern precious stones so perplexing to every
mineralogist. But in this case the confusion is the more excusable,
seeing that every variety of the Red Hyacinth (Ruby) has an exact
counterpart in colour amongst the various kinds of Garnets, and in many
cases they can only be distinguished from each other by hardness,
specific gravity, original crystallization, and other properties not
obvious to the eye, till lately the sole criterion. The Father of
Mineralogy, Theophrastus, evidently is describing several very
different stones under the head of "Ανθραξ (18) ; for although
his first kind, " brought from Carthage and Massilia, blood-red, but
like a live coal when held against the sun, and of extreme value, so
that a very small one sold for 40 gold staters (40 guineas)," seems to
have been the true Ruby, yet that found near Miletus in " polygonal
pieces " must have been our Garnet, the primary form of which is the
rhombic tetrahedron. Similarly those named by him as found in various
parts of Greece, and as
B2
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