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BATRACHITES.
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125
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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
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' The brown marks, seemingly produced by oxide of iron, observable on some of these fossils.
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