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Smaragdus, Emerald

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SMARAGDUS.
315
place they obtain the more peculiar specimens—for this species of gem is mined after like other metals—and it runs in veins in Cyprus quite by itself, and that too in great abundance. Few pieces, however, are met with of sufficient size for a signet-stone, most of them being too small, for which reason they use it for the soldering of gold, for it solders quite as well as the Chryso-colla (Silicious Malachite) ; and some even suspect both to be of the same nature, as they are certainly both exactly alike in colour. Chrysocolla, however, is found abundantly both in gold­mines, and still more so in copper-mines, as in those at Stobaj. But the Emerald, on the contrary, is rare, as we have already observed ; and it appears to be generated from the Jasper,7 for it is said that once there was found in Cyprus a stone of which the one half was Emerald, the other half Jasper,8 as being as yet not completely transformed by the action of the fluid. There is a peculiar method of working up this stone so as to give it lustre, for in the native state it has no brilliancy."
It is plain from the above that his Cyprian gem was merely the transparent Chrysocolla, still called the " Copper Emerald;" the remark that it could be used in soldering gold decides this. But that kind qualified as "rare and small in size" was indubi­tably the genuine one, for the Egyptian mine of the true Emerald had been worked ages before his times.
Pliny (xxxvii. 16) gives a long list of the various species of the Smaragdus, to the number of twelve, and of the localities furnishing each kind. The greatest part of these, the description of which he quotes from earlier writers, are evidently only green stones and carbonates of copper of different shades : a distinction must be made where he speaks from his own observation. First in the list he places the Scythian, " the best of all on account of its depth of colour and freedom from flaws (nullis major austeritas aut minus vitii), and as superior to other Emeralds as
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