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Murrhina, China-Agate

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MURRHINA.
237
MURRHINA : Μορρία : the China Agate.
Although this substance is continually alluded to by the writers of the Roman imperial times as the material of the most costly vases, yet the only description of its appearance and nature is that to be found in Pliny (xxxvii. 8). " The East sends us the Murrhina. They are found in several places, all little known, and within the Parthian dominions, but principally in Carmania. They are supposed to be formed from a liquid hard­ened by subterraneous heat. In superficial extent they never exceed that required for a small dish (abacos), and in thickness seldom suffice for a drinking-cup, like that just mentioned. They have a lustre without any strength, or rather a polish (nitor) than a lustre. But their value lies in the variety of their colours, the spots suddenly turning themselves around into purple and opaque-white, and a third made up of both ; the purple as if by a transition of colour becoming fiery, or the milk-white part turning red. Some principally admire the extreme parts in them (i. e. the edges of the vases), and a certain play of colours like that seen in the rainbow." Hence Martial makes his amateur cry for " maculosm pocula murrhse " (x. 80). " Others like the spots to be opaque and fatty (pingues) : any transparency or paleness is considered a defect. So are marks like salt, and warts, which do not indeed project, but are em­bedded in the substance, and that very often. The substance is somewhat recommended also by its agreeable smell."
Such a description would appear definite enough to enable a mineralogist to identify with ease the exact material intended, nevertheless upon no one point in the science have so many diverse theories been propounded. De Boot, alluding to the then prevailing notion that they were Chinese porcelain (recently
Molochites, Malachite Page of 453 Murrhina, China-Agate
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