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Topazius, Peridot

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TOPAZIUS.
337
their rounds, and cut out the patch of rock thus indicated, and deliver it to the proper persons to be polished.
This stone was indubitably our Chrysolite, or Peridot ; the distinctive characters of which exactly agree with those pointed out by Pliny. His Topazins was imported from some place in the Red Sea; at present the best come from the Levant, but from an unknown source : it was of a bright yellowish-green, a colour peculiar to itself (in suo virenti genere), and was the softest of all the precious stones, yielding to the file, and suf­fering from wear. Juba adds that it was found in masses of such magnitude as to serve for a statue, four cubits high, of Arsinoe, queen of Ptolemy Philadelphus, standing in the " Golden Temple :" an exaggerated story, like those noticed under "Emerald," re­lating to some imitation in glass. It had first been introduced into Egypt in the time of her mother, Berenice I., by Philemon "the admiral," whom we may hence infer had discovered the mine during his expedition against the pirates above mentioned. It was still highly valued in Pliny's age, though somewhat fallen in esti­mation since the time of its first discovery, when it was " wonder­fully admired" (mire placuisse), and preferred to all other gems.
under the Romans it had recently been met with in the neigh­bourhood of the Egyptian Thebes ; and the lapidaries accurately discriminated the two varieties the Chrysopteron, our Chrysolite ; and the Prasoides, our Peridot; the latter "aiming at the exact imitation of the colour of the leek-leaf." For, although the same chemically, both being Silicates of Magnesia coloured by Pro­toxide of Iron, yet, from the jeweller's point of view, there is a great difference between the Chrysolite and the Peridot. The former is much harder, and the yellow in it greatly predominates over the green : it possesses much of the Diamond's lustre, which it exactly resembles by candle-light, when that tinge is no longer discernible. In the Peridot green is the predominant colour, but slightly modified by yellow ; in fact, in the rough it much resembles a rolled pebble of bottle-glass, or a " Brighton Emerald."1 No wonder that the gem so greatly charmed the
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