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Batrachites, Toadstone

Basanites, Basalt Page of 453 Batrachites, Toadstone Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
BATRACHITES.
125
BATEACHITES: Toadstone.
The brief notice of this stone by Pliny is: " Coptos also produces the Batrachites, one sort like a frog in colour, another ebony, the third of red mixed with black." Small figures of frogs per­forated to be worn as amulets, and in the later Egyptian style, occasionally are to be met with cut in full relief out of a yellow and green Jasper, reproducing with singular exactness the actual colours of the reptile, and which, therefore, has some claim to be pronounced the ancient Batrachites. No further notice of this stone can be traced in the other writers of antiquity.
But this singular epithet, primarily designed only to denote the peculiar colour of the stone, furnished later times with the foundation for a most marvellous fable, which long obtained, as the number of examples still preserved attest, universal credit throughout Europe. Understanding the ancient term as imply­ing the natural production of the animal according to the analogy of other similar names, as the Saurites, Echites, &c, doctors taught that the " toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head." A full account of this will be found in that repertory of mediaeval lore the ' Speculum Lapidum' of Camillo Leonardo, written towards the close of the 15th century. He describes it by the name of Borax, Nosa, and Crapondinus, and as being found in the brain of a newly-killed toad. There are two kinds, the white which is the best, and the dark with a bluish tinge with the figure of an eye upon it.1 If swallowed it was a certain antidote against poison, in its passage through the bowels driving out all noxious matters before it. More than
' The brown marks, seemingly produced by oxide of iron, observable on some of these fossils.
Basanites, Basalt Page of 453 Batrachites, Toadstone
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