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Smaragdus, Emerald

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318
SMARAGDUS.
However, it was not likely that a casual visitor could obtain any­thing but the refuse of the ancient miners ; and a scientific ex­ploration of the locality might produce stones equal in quality to those Emeralds of Imperial times, hereafter to be noticed.
" All the other eight species," says Pliny, " are found in copper-mines." We may therefore, on that ground alone, set them down for Prases, Malachites, perhaps the Green Turquois, &o., without the trouble of farther investigation. The best amongst these was the Cyprian, " the merit of which lay in their colour, which was neither transparent nor diluted, but oily and liquid ; and in whatever way it be viewed, resembled the clearest sea-water, so as to be equally transparent and lustrous :" i. e. sending out its colour, and admitting the eye (" pariter que ut traluceat et niteat : hoe est lit colorem expellat, aciem reci-piat "). There are certain Prases occasionally met with amongst antique intagli of a good period, which, from the extraordinary richness and brightness of their green, can with difficulty bo dis­tinguished by the eye alone from Peruvian Emeralds : there can be little doubt these are the gems Pliny here describes. " It is said that the tomb of Ilermias, a prince of that island, which stood on the coast near the tunny-fishery, was surmounted by a marble lion, the eyes of which were made of these Emeralds (a proof of their large size and little value), and shot forth such lustre upon the sea as to scare away the fish; nor could the cause for a long time be discovered, until the gems in the eyes were changed." Curiously enough a marble lion was recently brought to the British Museum from Cnidos, the pupils of whose eyes were deeply hollowed out, as if for the reception of some gem of an appropriate colour. Democritus seems to have had in view the Turquois when he " classed in this family (as Pliny guardedly expresses it) the Hermiœan and the Persian kinds : the former, globose and fatty (extumescentes pinguiter) ; the Persian not indeed transparent, but of an agreeable equal colour, filling the sight, though not suffering it to penetrate them, like the eyes of cats and panthers, for they too shine, but are not transparent. These same Persian stones look dull in the sunshine, but grow bright in the shade, and show themselves from a greater distance than the other sorts." Their great defect besides, common to all
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