the manuscripts and cannot be regarded as a certain emendation, it has been omitted and the last syllable of έξομοιοννταί has been bracketed as a mistake.
4. others can turn what is placed on them entirely into stone.
The basis of diis statement, which at first sight seems a mere invention, may be that a stony layer of calcium carbonate or silica is deposited by underground water on objects buried in the ground or in caves. Pliny" states on the authority of Mucianus that mirrors, body-scrapers, clothes, and shoes buried in sarcophagi made of a certain stone are petrified. As Bailey15 has suggested, it is probable that these sarcophagi were made of limestone. Under suitable conditions, the passage of water containing dissolved carbon dioxide through a limestone sarcophagus would dissolve calcium carbonate from its walls and deposit it on the objects inside. In a sense, then, the apparent petrifaction of these objects could be attributed to the nature of the stone from which the vessel was made.
4. some have the power of attraction and others can test gold and silver, such as the stone called the Heraclean and the one called the Lydian.
In particular, the stones having the power of attraction were lyngourion, amber, and lodestone, which are briefly described in sections 28 and 29. Heraclean stone was a common early name for native magnetic iron oxide, or lodestone, and is so used, for example, by Plato.16 The name is apparently derived from the locality where it was discovered or obtained, but it cannot now be determined with certainty whether this was the Heraclea in Pontus or in Lydia or elsewhere, though it seems very probable that it was somewhere in Asia Minor. Theophrastus apparently uses the name here to denote one kind of touchstone. Likewise, Pliny17
14 XXXVI, 131.
15 K.C. Bailey, The Elder Pliny's Chapters on Chemical Subjects (London, 19291932), Part II, p. 252.
16 Timaeus, 80C; Ion, 533D.
17 XXXIII, 126. The text reads, "Auri argentique mentionem comitatur lapis quern coticulam appellant, quondam non solitus inveniri nisi in fiumine Tmolo, ut auctor est Theophrastus, nunc vero passim; alii Heraclium, alii Lydium vocant. . . ."
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