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Ch. 6: Carbunculus, Ruby

Ch. 6: Carbunculus, Ruby Page of 377 Ch. 6: Carbunculus, Ruby Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
226 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
fire, whence they were called "Acausti," applies exclu­sively to the Ruby. For whilst the Garnet easily fuses into a dark globule of oxide of iron (and in some Swedish mines constitutes, in its coarsest form, an appreciable pro­portion of the ore smelted), Henckel relates an experiment in which a Buby was sufficiently softened by means of a powerful burning-glass to receive the impression from a Jasper intaglio, without the slightest detriment to its original colour or hardness on its cooling.
The same conclusion may be deduced from the brief notice in Theophrastus, who particularises, amongst the " polygonal " ones found in the neighbourhood of Miletus, some having "six" angles. Now the numerous angles of the common Garnet, a rhombic dodecahedron, form its most distinguishing feature ; whilst the Spinel Buby is a perfect octahedron, and therefore presents but six angles : and the exactness of its singular form would naturally fix the attention of the early mineralogist. Pliny gives the first place to the Carbunculi Amethystizontes, " in which the extreme blaze goes out in the purple of the Amethyst." These may have been our Almandines, as well as our purple Spinels, for the difference between the two is hardly to be appreciated by the eye alone.
But the true Buby and its two inferior varieties can with greater certainty be referred to that class of the Carbunculi described separately by Pliny as the Lychnis. His Lychnis belonged to the same family of fiery stones as the Carbunculus, was of pre-eminent beauty, and derived its name from its property either of lighting up lamps, or of lighting up itself by lamplight (a lucernarum ac-censu). The former explanation of his meaning is sup­ported by Orpheus, saying of his Lychnis ι270), "from off the altars, thou, like the Crystal, dost send forth a flame without the aid of fire ;" but Solinus, as we
Ch. 6: Carbunculus, Ruby Page of 377 Ch. 6: Carbunculus, Ruby
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