20 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
are
gathered, and are valuable to those who make a business of selling
them, because the white opaque pebbles become translucent after
cutting, or rather, during the process of cutting, and they are then
passed off for moonstones, which are worth from one-third to one-half
more than the cost of cutting the quartz pebbles, the purchaser being
led to believe that he is getting a moonstone, although this could not
be possible, since moonstones have never been found on either the
eastern or the western coast of the United States. As for the cut
moonstones which are brought back by the tourist, under the impression
that he is getting native material and workmanship, these all come from
Europe.
Pebble-mania
is not confined to mankind alone. Birds and animals possess it. The
magpie picks up and hides away bright objects, including odd pebbles,
or carries them to its nest. The stones known as aetites were
said to be found in eagles ' nests, although they may have been
swallowed by the birds for digestive purposes, just as the hen's crop
is full of stones, many of them being transparent, a proof that the
fowl had been attracted by them, and had swallowed these in preference
to other, duller ones. Notable instances of transparent pebbles are the
alectorii, or "cock-stones."
The
great Italian goldsmith and sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1574),
relates that when a youth he often shot cranes with his arquebuse, and
that in several instances he found in their entrails not only fine
turquoises, but also fragments of the so-called plasma-emerald and
even occasionally small pearls. This serves to indicate that the pretty
exterior of such objects exerted an influence upon these birds in some
degree analogous to the impressions aroused in mankind on viewing them.35
85 Benvenuto Cellini, " Due trattati, uno intorno alle otto principali arti dell' oreficeria," etc., Fiorenze, Valente Panizzi à Marco Peri, 1568, fol. 10 recto.
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