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Book V about lodestone, hematite, geodes, hematite, selenite, lapis secularum, asbestos, mica

Book V about lodestone, hematite, geodes, hematite, selenite, lapis secularum, asbestos, mica Page of 251 Book V about lodestone, hematite, geodes, hematite, selenite, lapis secularum, asbestos, mica Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
104
DE NATURA FOSSILIUΜ
sand, others earth, sand and small stones. The stone in Taphiusa aetites is called callimus and not tenerius according to Pliny.33 Paeantides and gemonides found in Macedonia near the monument of Tiresias, cissites found in Egypt near Copton and gasidane from the Medos and Erbil are all names for white aetites. Paeantides is so called because it stops labor pains, gemonidesu because it appears to become pregnant and produce another stone, cissites because it conceives. We are ignorant of the actual meaning of the name gasidane but since the mineral is said to conceive and to have loose parts within itself which are detected by shaking we know that it is aetites. Paeantides has the appearance of glacial water, gasidane, a swan or colored flowers. Cissites is white and does not differ in color from aetites which is often this color. Different writers have de­scribed these varieties of geodes in many ways. Since some of them are angular they obviously differ from aetites just as belemnites that contains an earth is distinguished by form from gaeodes. Nevertheless one cannot exclude them from the class of aetites since the latter may be angular when compressed. We cannot ascertain from Pliny whether they were angular or not and the writers he has copied have said nothing concerning the form of these stones. Some have been described more carefully than others. All the stones mentioned so far are those that Theophrastus and Mutianus believed to be distinct species.
All geodes dry and certain ones are astringent. A geode will purge mat­ter which may cover the eyes and when mixed with water and used as a salve it reduces inflammation of the breast and testes. When it contained small pebbles the Greeks believed that it would keep the fetus in place and prevent miscarriage if fastened to the left forearm of a pregnant woman and when bound to her left thigh would reduce labor pains and permit a painless delivery. Pliny writes, however, that it is effiacious only when it has been newly taken from the earth.
Enhydros is a variety of geode. The name comes from the water it contains. It is always round, smooth and very white but will sway back and forth when moved. Inside it is a liquid just as in an egg, as Pliny, our Albertus and others believed, and it may even drip water. Liquid bitumen, sometimes with a pleasant odor, is found enclosed in rock just as in a vase.35 Belemnites and geodes contain earth as I have mentioned.
Samius lapis is found enclosed in the Samian earth that artisans use to polish their work. Dioscorides states that the best is white and sometimes
33 Agricola includes under geodes hollow nodules of chalcedony and carbonate minerals, usually calcite with or without crystal lined interiors and ironstone con­cretions. Most of the earth and sand filled geodes belong to this latter group. Un­doubtedly vugs which had weathered intact from veins were included here. One may assume that Agricola did not believe the myth universally accepted at that time, that aetites gave birth to young.
34 A more correct form would be geminides.
36 This may be a reference to light hydrocarbons sometimes found in vesicles in igneous rocks that have traversed bituminous sediments.
Book V about lodestone, hematite, geodes, hematite, selenite, lapis secularum, asbestos, mica Page of 251 Book V about lodestone, hematite, geodes, hematite, selenite, lapis secularum, asbestos, mica
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