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Jaspis, Jasper, Quartz-gems

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JASPIS.                                          205
olive, an intermediate shade that links them with the Plasma. To this same class must similarly be referred those clear brown Sards called in French Sardoine, on which most of the finest antique work occurs. For this sort the Greeks had a most appropriate name, the Capnias or Capnites, the smoke-stone, for it has precisely the appearance of being thus artificially tinged. Pliny's " Onychi juncta quae jasponyx vocatur " is that rare variety where an opaque red layer is superimposed on a translucent plasma. The title Sphragides, " seal-stones," could of necessity only have been given to a kind of stono used for that purpose, to the almost com­plete exclusion of every other. The Greeks did not reckon them Sards, because Bed was the character necessary in that species, as is expressed by the name (from the Persian Sered). This will explain the epithet Terebinthizon, given to one sort by Dioscorides, it expresses the clear, liquid yellow colour, like turpentine, that distinguishes the favourite material of the Greek intagli. Pliny, having in his recollection the fraud, then so common, of making the false Sardonyx by cementing together its three different strata with Venice turpentine, says he fancies the Terebinthizusa was improperly so named, as being made up of many gems of the same family ; but this notion, opposed as it is to the definition by Dioscorides, cannot apply to an unstratified stone.5 It is also a strange coincidence that the accurate Yirgil (iv. 261) should describe the sword of iEneas as " stellatus iaspide fulva." " Epipha-nius also has " another sort found in the caves of Mount Ida in Phrygia resembling the dye from the purple murex-blood, but more transparent as approaching the colour of wine, and redder than the Amethyst.7 For," adds he, "the Jasper is not invariably of one colour, nor of one quality, but some are softer and paler,
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