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THEOPHRASTUS ON STONES
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belemnite, since this fossil substance does not have the hardness, the transparency, or the electrostatic-attractive properties ascribed to lyngounon or lyncunum.
The lyngounon of Theophrastus has been most often identified with a particular kind of precious or semiprecious stone. De Laet,164 who referred to an earlier suggestion of Epiphanius, says that "the description of lyncunum is certainly not inappropriate to the hyacinth of modern writers." Hill165 rightly rejects its earlier identification with belemnite, but, ignoring the possibility that it was amber, he decides with De Laet that it was "hyacinth." Apparently he uses this word to describe certain varieties of garnet. Watson166 identifies the lyngounon of Theophrastus with tourmaline, but evidently his opinion is partly based on the attractive properties of heated tourmaline which had recently been discovered. This identification is repeated by various later writers. For example, Dana167 states that lyncunum is supposed to be the ancient name for common tourmaline. However, the absence of tourmaline among surviving examples of ancient gems is clearly against this view. Its identification as red garnet or red tourmaline may have been based to some extent on the emendation πυρρά ("flame-colored") which was substituted by Furlanus for the manuscript reading ψυχρά ("cold") and was adopted by several editors, including Hill. Wimmer has the manuscript reading in the neuter form ψνχρόν. Though the emendation seems to agree better with the description of its color ("colorem igneum") given by Pliny,168 who apparently derived his information from uiis account of Theophrastus, the manuscript reading is more suitable, since it is evident from section 31 that the color of lyngounon was yellow. The suggestion has been made that it was the stone known today as the hyacinth or jacinth,169 but this seems to be partly due to a confusion of mineralogical names. That lyngounon could have been any of the gem varieties of zircon is highly improbable; no
164 J. De Laet, De Gemmis et Lapidibus Libri Duo (Leyden, 1647), p. 155. The text reads: sane descriptio lyncurii non male convenit cum hyacintho Neotericorum.
165 Theophrastus's History of Stones, pp. 73-77.
ιββ philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, LI, 396.
167 J. D. Dana, Manual of Mineralogy and Petrography (New York, 1909), p. 306.
168 XXXVII, 53.
169 See Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed.), s.v. hyacinth.
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