JASPIS.
203
you
saw on the hand these cows and this Jasper, you would declare that the
first were breathing creatures, the last a field of growing grass."
All these details show that the primary meaning of the name implied the stone now called the Plasma, a calcedony2
coloured green by nickel, the better quality of which was distinguished
as the Prasitis, " of the colour of verdigris," by Theophrastus (37),
and as the Prasius by Pliny.
Thus it appears that the ancient idea of the Jaspis was
exactly the opposite to the modern of the Jasper, the latter being our
term for a class always opaque, and, in fact, corresponding better to
the Achates of the Romans.
Subsequently
other translucent colours were included under this denomination ;
Dioscorides, besides the Emerald-colour, admitting a second like
crystal, a third of a sky-blue, and a fourth the Terebinthizon like the
Callais. But Pliny, half a century later, greatly extends the list,
seemingly including some shades of the modem Amethyst and Calcedony ;
one, the most valued, showing a tinge of purple (purpuras), perhaps
Rose-quartz, another of the Piose, the third of the Emerald. Again,
another resembled the Sard, another the violet3 (rather verdigris).
"
Optima quae purpuras aliquid habet ; secunda quaa rosas ; tertia quœ
sma'ragdi "-—" in Cappadocia ex purpura cajrulea, tristis atque non
refulgens—similis est et sardse imitata et violas:" definitions
applying exactly to the various shades of oui· purple quartz or false
Amethyst. (See Amethystus).
The
Persian and Caspian kinds were sky-blue, hence had the epithet of
Aérizusa, explained by Pliny as resembling the colour of the sky on an
autumn morning ; these were also called Borea (Bopeîa) by the Greeks. That this was our Sap-
