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The Family of the Agate 73
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agate, and what one sees is merely an earthy substance which creates the illusion.
Cornelians, jasper, sard and sardonyx are other varieties of agate. As to their description, the bloodstone mentioned above is dark green with crimson flecks, the cornelian a bright red throughout, the jasper dark red, the sard red-brown, the onyx, as you know, black with white bands, the sardonyx brown-red or white.
According to the geologists, all agates were formed beneath the sea bottom of deep oceans, and are the deposits of the hard, pure silica shell or outer casing of minute living creatures. These, in the countless ages that have passed, have been formed into layers, and have, by the inimitable processes of Nature, become some of the hardest substances we know.
One would scarcely think that hard agate could be associated with flowing honey in any conceivable industrial process. Yet the well-worn phrase is true: Truth is sometimes-stranger than fiction. The Romans knew—and what race before them who can tell?—that when agate is cooked in honey it acquires markings which make it more desirable. Did some early Idar craftsman see mention of this fact in Pliny, or did he stumble on the discovery of his own accord? At all events, the lapidaries of Idar do cook some varieties of agate in honey. There is extant a well-known recipe that prescribes one half-pound of honey to twenty ounces of water and the cooking of the agate in it to last from fourteen to twenty-one days. When the cooking period is over, the stone is soaked in sulphuric
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