though
much less perfectly, all their information. In the course of my
dissertations many of these coincidences will be pointed out,
especially as connected with the true origin of the ancient
nomenclature of gems. A truly practical naturalist, he totally ignores
a part of the subject then all important with mediœval Europe, and one
that now remains for us to pass under review.
Marbodus
was, to all appearance, the author of the metrical version into
Norman-French of his ' Lapidarium,' which is found written in a
contemporary hand, in the oldest MS. of the poem. The universal
reception of the chimerical science promulgated by him and by Psellus,
naturally led to the multiplication of treatises upon stones considered
merely as medicinal or magical agents, and thus has occasioned the
neglect and consequent loss of the invaluable memoirs of such acute
and practical observers as Sudines, Sotacus, and Zenothemis. To this,
amongst the Latins, was added another cause for such neglect : Pliny's
condensation of their separate publications had brought about the
complete obscuration, of these his predecessors ; whilst amongst the
Greeks his contemporaries, and those that followed, Natural History was
no longer studied except with reference to medicine or magic, sciences
at the time and long after very closely connected. * The ' Lapidarium '
of Marbodus is the last work professing to treat, however imperfectly,
of the natural history, in its proper sense, of the precious stones.
The numerous
