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Lyncurium, Jacinth

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220                                      LYNCURIUM.
Our Jacinth was not the Lychnis, as some have taken it to be, the latter was indeed electric and hard to engrave ; but the definition of its two distinctive colours, as crimson and purple (purpura and coccus), proves it indubitably the Spinel. The former was reckoned by the Romans (at least the yellow kind) amongst the Chrysolithi; a numerous genus, including every yellow stone, from tbe Oriental Topaz to the humble yellow Crystal, or Cairngorum. Some of the Indian kind probably were Jacinths, and the notice of the defect in the Arabian that they were cloudy and filled up as it were with their own filings or dust, aptly expresses the peculiar porousness of this stone.
Modern jewellers often term Jacinth, a stone belonging to a totally different species, the Cinnamon stone, a reddish-brown Garnet, greatly resembling it in outward appearance. But the Cinnamon stone may readily be detected by its total want of electricity, and also by the clearness or glassy nature of its sub­stance when held against the sun, so different from the porous Jacinth. [Chryselectrum,] These may have been Pliny's (44) Chryselectri, dyed with saffron, and only to be distinguished from pastes by their coldness. The Cinnamon stone was en­graved upon by the Romans and the later Persians, but not to nearly the same extent as the real Jacinth. The Renaissance artists employed the Jacinth very largely for works in relief, principally the yellow kind, which alone was then at their com­mand. The ancients very rarely cut their camei in single-coloured stones, except in the dark-red or the purple materials so appropriate to the subjects.
The derivation of the name " Jacinth " is curious, and the following appear to have been the steps by which it came to be transferred to the modern gem from one of a very different family, which thereby has totally lost its original designation. " Jacinth," the French " Hyacinthe," comes to us from the Italian " Giacinto," formed according to the usual rule of that language from the Latin " Hyacinthus." Although it is plain that the Hyacinthus of the earlier writers, Pliny and Solinus, was our Sapphire, and its distinctive quality to them its azure colour, yet we find Epiphanius, at the close of the fourth century, describing under that name all the three varieties of the Precious
Lyncurium, Jacinth Page of 453 Lyncurium, Jacinth
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