tion
of their beauty, and their facile subservience to the most elegant of
arts. He has constantly occasion to admire that Proteus of the gem
family—the Indian Garnet—in all its changeful shapes of Almandine,
Cinnamon-stone, Guamaccino, and Pyrope: the transparent Calcedony in
its emerald, purple, sanguine, and sapphirine disguises; the splendid
dyes of the Arabian Jasper; and last, not least, the Agate, in its
normal variegation, or regularly stratified and taking the name of the
Onyx and Sardonyx. The jeweller of to-day can discern no difference
between the vile German silex artificially stained with gaudy
meretricious hues, and the precious Indian export of " the land of
Havilah ;" the student of antique art is enabled at once to detect and
to appreciate the distinction.
It
is gratifying to me to find that the highest scientific authority has
sanctioned several of my attempts at identifying the present
representatives of antique names, so strangely bandied about and
misappropriated during the long night of the Middle Ages (which formed
one of the chief features of my scheme); for example, in my tracing the
different species of Pliny's " Adamas " up to the various forms of the
native crystal; my indicating the true nature of the ancient
Amethystus, Callaina, Hyacin-thus, the Jaspis with its subdivisions,
the Lyncurium, Lychnis, Murrhina, the Onyx of the Greeks, Sandaster,
Sphragides, &c. Of these attributions of mine the greater part were
original, and proposed for the first time in this treatise; one or two
were suggested by the timid conjectures of previous writers, but never
before established upon a basis of sound deductions. It is not
therefore a matter of wonder that a few out of their large number
should have been dis-
