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Smaragdus, Emerald

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320
SMARAGDUS.
rate acquaintance with the peculiar properties of the gem. For a large flat Emerald, if held so as to reflect the light, will assume the exact appearance of being silvered at the back : its green disappears when its plane is brought to a certain angle with the ray of light ; and it will seem exactly like a fragment of looking-glass in the same position. This singular change is not ob­servable in any other coloured stone. Similarly Mahommed Ben Mansur lays down that the distinction between the Emerald and the other stones like it, viz. the Jasper, the Green Laal (Spinel), and the Mina (Green Glass) lies in the polish. And again, " the first-class stone, Saikali, the clear, polished, reflects whatever is held before it like polished steel."
The huge Smaragdi mentioned (under reservation) by Theo-phrastus, as standing in the Egyptian and Syrian temples, were made probably of Green Jaspers, or Malachites, artfully cemented together, or perhaps of glass. But the dimensions of such obelisks and columns must nevertheless have been wonderfully magnified by the reporters. Apion, in the reign of Tiberius, had mentioned a Colossus of Serapis as then standing in the Labyrinth, and nine cubits high, made out of Smaragdus. The Alexandrians were ever famous for their glass-manufacture, so that such figures, although their size has doubtless been enor­mously exaggerated, may actually have been executed in some vitreous composition, represented to the credulous visitor as the real Emerald. Such in truth was the case with the famous Sacro Catino of the Cathedral at Genoa, traditionally believed to have been used by Christ at the institution of the Lord's Supper. According to Erasmus Stella (1517), the Genoese had a plausible story accounting to the sceptical few for the presence of a vessel of such inestimable value upon the humble table where the Passover was celebrated. It figured at the time among the banqueting-plate of King Herod, and had been forwarded to Jerusalem, whither it was his intention to come from Galilee to keep the Feast : but the King, having by Divine interposition, altered his mind, his dinner-service was unceremoniously bor­rowed for their Master's use by the Disciples. Gesner relates that a monastery near Lyons, still (in 1565) boasted of an opposition Emerald dish, according to them the only authentic
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