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Sardonyx

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SARDONYX.
speaking here of a stone necessarily having three layers, the thickness of the white zone is a sufficient refutation to Kohler's hypothesis, the top layer in the Nicolo being of infinitesimal tenuity.
Zenothemis recorded that this stone was held in no estimation by the Indians, who, instead of using it in jewelry, made sword handles out of it, so large were the pieces. These, it was well known, were picked up in the beds of torrents. Thoy first came into request in Europe, when it was observed that they were almost the only class of gems which when engraved did not pull away the (soft) sealing-wax.2 The natives at last had learnt from the Romans to admire these stones : " they, that is to say the lower classes, wear them bored and strung for necklaces, but make no other use of them. This perforation is now considered the test of the Indian kind."
This last remark explains the reason for the fine hole so often to be discovered passing through the axis of Sardonyx camei. The stones imported in the shape of oval beads were subsequently cut down into flattened disks, so as to present their layers pro­perly disposed for the working out of the artist's design. From ignorance of the original destination of the material, many antiquaries have been puzzled to explain the object of these minute perforations ; and still more the method by which they had been drilled through such thin slabs without splitting them. The abundance of the stone in India appears from the exagge­rated tale in Philostratus (Αρ. Tyan. iii. 27) : " The stones that come from India, amongst the Greeks indeed are set in rings and necklaces, but amongst the Indians are of sufficient size to make flaggons and wine-coolers, and bowls holding enough to quench the thirst of four droughty men upon a summer's day."
As the principal merit of the substance lay in the evenness and contrast of the colours, the Romans rarely engraved intagli upon it. They employed it in their jewelry and rings cut either en cabochon, or in a truncated cone of an oval section, more or
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