216	LYNCURIUM.
	The Lyncurium derives its name from the strange notion that it was the congealed urine of the Lynx, and it is thus described by Theophrastus (28) : " Equally wonderful is the Lyncurium (for out of this also signets are engraved ; since it is very hard, exactly like a real stone), for it attracts in the same manner as Amber ; some say not only straws and bits of wood, but even copper and iron, if they be in thin pieces, as Diocles also hath observed. It is highly transparent and cold to the touch. That produced by the male lynx is better than that by the female, and that of the wild lynx better than that of the tame, in consequence both of the difference of their food, and of the former having plenty of exercise ; the latter, none—hence the secretions of the wild are the more limpid. Those practised in the search "find it by digging, for the animal endeavours- to conceal the deposit by scraping up the earth after having voided it. j There is a peculiar and tedious method of working up this substance also (as well as the Smaragdus)." Pliny indeed (13) after apologising for mentioning the Lyn­curium, to which he was forced by the pertinacity of writers on mineralogy, quotes the above passage from Theophrastus; and declares that unless the stone were Amber,1 it nowhere existed at all in his time, and that the whole tale was a fiction. But Theophrastus knew Amber too well to make so ridiculous a mis­take, in fact he proceeds to describe it accurately enough in the