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Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum

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HYACINTHUS.                                    193
Of no ancient gem has the attribution of the name been so much disputed as of this. The earlier writers, De Boot and De Laet, put it down without hesitation as a variety of the common Ame­thyst ; Millin and K. O. Millier regard it as the pale sort, the latter asserting that the name "Amethystus" only applied to the dark purple stone. Bruckmann thinks it was either a pale amethyst, or a garnet violet with violet (Almandine). Lessing, on the other hand, defines it as a reddish-brown fiery stone, the present dark Jacinth. All these explanations are based upon an exclusive consideration of the passage in Pliny (xxxvii. 40) con­taining a brief and vague description of the gem ; for, curiously enough, it is not included in Theophrastus' list of ring-stones perhaps in his age it had not yet found its way into Greece from the remotest part of India. Pliny's words are, "that it differs greatly from the Amethyst, although a variety of a similar colour (tamen e vicino descendens). The difference consists in this, that the violet splendour of the Amethyst is diluted in this stone, and, so far from filling the eye, does not even touch it, fading away more speedily than the flower of the same name." But what this flower was is equally a matter of dispute amongst botanists as is the nature of the gem amongst mineralogists. Pliny (xxi. 97) describes it as a bulbous plant, growing abundantly in Gaul, and used by the natives to dye blue or lilac with (hysginum). Its juice had the singular property of checking the development of puberty in boys. Sprengel defines it to be the common gladiolus ; others, the tiger-lily ; others, the lark-spur : it would rather seem to have been the blue fieur-de-lys, the blossom of which lasts but a morning, to
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Heliotropium, Heliotrope Page of 453 Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum
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