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Prasius, Plasma

Prasius, Plasma Page of 453 Sandaster, Aventurine Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
290                                        PRASIUS.
The native country of the Prase is now unknown, but lumps of it unworked are sometimes picked up amidst the débris of Roman edifices. Several of the green stones distinguished by Pliny with the names of Prasoides, Tanos, Molochites, and per­haps the Callaina, are, to all appearance, now included under the indiscriminate appellation of Plasma. Certain it is, that the great variety of the tints and substances of the stones so designated at present would have induced the ancients, whose mineralogical nomenclature was entirely based upon external peculiarities, to class them under different names.
Prismatical beads of Plasma, as well as of Garnet, are often found in the earth about Rome. They all range to nearly the same size, so that antiquaries have little difficulty in forming an oven row out of many distinct purchases. A fact this tending to prove in its way, that our Plasma was but a species of the Green Jasper of the ancients : for Naumachius names necklaces of the Jaspis as equally coveted by women with those of the Hyacin-thus (Sapphire).
Orpheus (749) sings : " Hence (by eating of the serpent-sacri­fice) was I taught thy powerful virtue as a remedy against the sable asp, thou life-saving, divine stone, that bearest the name, and the colour, of the green leek." Here we find the root of the manifold virtues as an antidote ascribed to the Green Jasper by mediaeval sages.
Prasius, Plasma Page of 453 Sandaster, Aventurine
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