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Carbunculus, Ruby

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CARBUNCULUS.
147
ing to the doctrine of his day that every Precious Stone was produced in a matrix consisting of an inferior variety of the same subject-matter. But De Laet comes nearer the mark in quoting Marco Polo's notice of a mountain, Ballaheia, in India, supplying this stone and giving it the appellation.
Another argument, perhaps of some weight, as founded on old tradition, in support of the identity of the Balais with one kind of the Lychnis, is that Camillo Leonardo ascribes the same supernatural virtues in averting hail and tempests to the Balais, which Orpheus has given to his Lychnis.
The Romans experienced the same difficulty that exists now in distinguishing the various kinds of their Carbunculus from each other in consequence of the practice of jewellers to back them with various foils so as to improve their colour: " tanta est in illis occasio artis, subditis per quae translucere cogantur." A delusion this, especially to be observed in works of the Renais-sance, where heads in relief, set in rings, often appear like the finest Eubies; but are in fact only Garnets backed by a ruby foil. It was also believed in Pliny's time that the dull-coloured Car-bunculi could be made lustrous by maceration in vinegar for the space of fourteen days : and that the effect lasted for the same number of months. These gems were also imitated so exactly in paste, that the false could only be distinguished from the true by touching them with the emery-stone (cote) : the artificial substance being softer and brittle, inferior in weight, and some­times showing silvery air-bubbles in the interior. And this is true to the letter, for in no other colour, except the Emerald, have the ancients been so successful as with the Ruby, in the making of their pastes : thus an antique paste lately came under my notice bearing a splendid intaglio of Medusa's Head, which could with the utmost difficulty be detected to be not an actual Carbuncle, even showing all the flaws within its substance to which the real stone is so liable. These flaws in the imitative gem are produced designedly, by suddenly cooling the paste upon its withdrawal from the furnace.4
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