Magic Stones and Electric Gems Kunz: Magic of Jewels Page 45



	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.