Quantcast
  We apologize for any slow response. This will be fixed before October 31st Portal logo
Login/Register
Bactrian Gold Treasure from Afghanistan, coming soon....
/gemstones/king-natural-history/page_432 - 2
 

Notes

Notes Page of 453 Notes Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
420
NOTES.
necessary destruction of the bulk of the stone, is the problem which certain chemists profess to have solved. De Boot positively asserts that his im­perial patron, Eudolf IL, had discovered a menstruum distilled from anti­mony, by means of which, with the application of heat, he was enabled to clear diamonds from the flaws, clouds, and colours that detract so greatly from their value. De Boot declares that he had himself seen a stone, bought for 6000 ducats in the first instance, which, after being thus " emendated," was valued at double the sum. " But," adds he, " a secret like this must be divulged to none." It, therefore, like numerous valuable arcana of those " tentative " philosophers, has perished with its discoverer. But now again Barbot, who doubtless had never heard of Rudolf II., boasts of having attained to the same desideratum, and styles himself on his title-page, " Inventeur du procédé de Décoloration du Diamant brut."
ANCIENT BRITISH COINAGE, p. 105.
It has ever been a question with numismatists whether the Britons pos­sessed a national coinage at the time of Caisar's invasion. The French writers, headed by Mionnet, ever seeking for a sly blow at " perfide Albion," boldly claim every drachm of Celtic coinage turned up in our soil as an importation from some Gallic mint—pretensions which are met with patri­otic indignation by the antiquaries of this side of the Channel. By a strange coincidence both parties quote the passage in which Ca>sar men­tions the money of the Britons : the one to prove that they had, the other that they had not a coined money at the time of Ca?sar's invasion.
This singular discrepancy in their deductions arises from the simple fact that neither side have observed that Cœsar, in his description of Britain, divides the inhabitants into two classes—colonists and aborigines. The former, whom he describes first, were the Belgae who had passed over from Gaul at different times and with various objects, and had occupied the whole of the coast, retaining however the names of the states from which they had emigrated (v. 12). How far this occupation had been pushed appears from the incidental remark, that " within the memory of people then living, Divitiacus, king of the Suessones (Belgaî), had been lord of all Britain " (ii. 4). Those settled in the province of Cantium, and by far the most civilized of the inhabitants, are noticed as differing very slightly from the Gauls on the mainland in their manners and customs. Now we know that the Gauls had possessed, for perhaps two centuries before this date, an immense gold coinage. As the colonists retained their ancient culture, such as it was, it follows almost necessarily that they kept up the prac­tice of striking coins. They would imitate the types of their national coinage, but more rudely until, by the successive copying of copies, they degenerated into those barbarous designs so far removed from the prototype of all (the Philippus) as to become altogether enigmatical. That these colonists had a coinage of their own is almost involved in the fact of the identity of their civilization with that of their parent states.
In the second place, Caasar proceeds to describe the aborigines, the " nati
Notes Page of 453 Notes
Suggested Illustrations
Other Chapters you may find useful
Other Books on this topic
bullet Tag
This Page