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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.