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Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum

Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum Page of 453 Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
HYACINTHUS.
195
when put in the mouth, it is colder than other stones. For engraving upon, indeed, it is by no means adapted, inasmuch as it defies all grinding (attritum respuat) : it is not, however, entirely invincible, since it is engraved upon and cut into shape (scribitur et figuratur) by means of the diamond." In the pre­ceding passage Solinus has noticed the production of cinnamon in the same district, which, as the native country of that spice, must have lain very far south in the Indian Ocean. "Ethiopia " and " India " are frequently used indiscriminately by the writers of the Decline ; thus Heliodorus talks of the gymnosophists, bamboos, and amethysts of the former country—things all pecu­liar to the latter.
Three characters in the above passage apply to our Sapphire, and to no other gem ; the lustrous sky-blue colour, its liability to be clouded with shades of indigo or with watery blue, and its pre-eminent hardness—the last quality, indeed, being possessed by it in the next degree to the Diamond. Pliny's account of the Hyacinthus, already quoted, agrees in the main with the above, though his description of the gem is far from being so explicit as that of Solinus, who was evidently a connoisseur in precious stones, and throughout the whole of his compilation has success­fully laboured to rectify and elucidate the somewhat loose and confused language of the great naturalist. Solinus, to judge from his style and certain historical allusions, flourished two centuries after Pliny, when the vast commercial intercourse with India established in the reign of Trajan had made the Romans much better acquainted with the more peculiarly Indian gems. For then, as in our day, real Sapphires came from Ceylon exclu­sively ; those so often quoted as to be found at Expailly in France being, according to Barbot, nothing more than blue cry­stals of Quartz. The ancient Indians obtained their Hyacinthi out of the beds of torrents, just as the Cingalese do their Sap­phires to this day, for the gem never occurs in the matrix, but in rolled pieces mingled with the gravel. This peculiarity of their origin is elegantly alluded to by Naumachius (v. 58), where, speaking of the "purple Hyacinth and the green Jasper, in which the foolish glory," he adds, " they are but stones upon the
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Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum Page of 453 Hyacinthus, Sapphire, Corundum
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