bunculus, a
little coal, because when this beautiful variety of the " noble "
garnet is held up between the eyes and the sun, it is no longer a deep,
blood-red, but has exactly the appearance of a small piece of live or
glowing coal, the scarlet portion of its colour-mixture being
particularly evident. The ancient Greeks called it anthrax, which name
is sometimes used in medicine to-day with reference to the severe
boil-like inflammation which, from its burning and redness, is called
a carbuncle, though it is more usual to apply the word " anthrax" to
the malignant cattle-disease which is occasionally passed on to man by
means of wool, hair, blood-clots, etc., etc., and almost always ends
fatally. A great deal of mystery and superstition has always existed
in connexion with this stone— the invisibility of the bearer of the
egg-carbuncle laid by a goldfinch, for instance.
(F) The manganese-alumina garnet—
—is usually found in a crystalline or granular form, and mostly in
granite and in the interstices of the plates, or lamina, of rocks
called schist. One variety of this, which is a deep hyacinth in colour,
though often of a brown-tinted red, is called " spessar-tine,"' or "
spessartite," from the district in which it is chiefly found, though
its distribution is a fairly wide one.The Lapis-Lazuli.
The
lapis-lazuli, sometimes called " azure stone," is almost always blue,
though often containing streaks of white and gold colour, the latter of
which are due to the presence of minute specks or veins of iron
pyrites, the former and colourless streaks being due to free lime,
