32 THE MAGIC OP JEWELS AND CHARMS
Most
wonderful specimens of rutilated quartz are the great, rich brown,
possibly titanium-colored masses in the Morgan Collection at the
American Museum of Natural History, that in the Vaux Collection at the
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and a smaller mass in the
British Museum ; these were all obtained near Middlesex, Vermont. The
rutile is a rich transparent or translucent red, varying in thinness
from that of an ordinary needle to that of a knitting-needle, and even
to that of a thin lead-pencil. Wonderful specimens are also found in
the Alps of St. Gothard, in Madagascar, and in Alexander County, North
Carolina, where they are found in quantity as minute crystals of a rich
red or golden yellow.
Other curious and interesting rock-crystals with inclusions are those showing enclosed drops of water, the kind termed enhydros by Pliny 51 and
many old writers ; in some of the rarer specimens the enclosed water is
present in considerable quantity. Quartz with inclusions of this type
was highly appreciated in the Greco-Roman world, and one of the best
poets of the Decadence, Claudian (fl. about 400 a.D.), composed
a series of poetic epigrams upon them, seven of these being in Latin
and two in Greek. An example of the best in each tongue, the first in
the former and the second in the latter, must be of interest, although
the literal prose version cannot have the charm of the original verse.52
The
Alpine ice, already precious in its frigidity, acquires an intense
hardness through the action of the solar rays, but unable to transform
itself entirely into a gem, it betrays its original source by the water
that still remains within it. This adds at once to the beauty of this
liquid stone and to its value.
In
its changeful aspect, this crystal born from snow and fashioned by the
hand of man is an image of the world, of the heavens enclosing cruel
ocean in their wide embrace.
™ Plinii, " Historia naturalis," Lib. xxxvii, cap. 73.
"Collection
des auteurs Latin, ed. by M. Nazaire; vol. i, Lucain, Silius Italicus,
Claudien, text and French trans., Paris, 1850, pp. 737, 738.
