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Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications

Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications Page of 251 Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
166
DE NATURA FOSSILIUM
has been made into a hospital, the tomb of Masolus that is preserved today at Halicarnassos. In Italy there are brick walls at Arezzo and Bevagna. So much concerning stones made by the hand of man.
I return to stones formed by nature. There is a petrifying juice found both outside the earth mixed with water and hidden within the earth that turns all things it touches or surrounds into stone. I will mention first the roots, trunk, branches, bark, foliage, flowers and fruit of trees that are turned to stone in fountains and rivers as I have mentioned in Book II of De Natura Eorum Quae Effluunt Ex Terra. In Elboganun, near a town that is named for the gliding of the hawk, large fig trees with the bark in­tact are found in the ground turned into stone with golden pyrite deposited in the cracks. Also near Krakow, Bohemia (a citadel built by Karl the Fourth behind Rakovicius on the road to Swanberg) trees with branches intact are dug up near a river and these have been used by the peasants of Colembrach to make angular whetstones that they have presented to King Ferdinand of Bohemia and his friends. In Misena near the fortified city of Rubenstien, four miles from Chemnitz, in a certain reservoir we see the trunks of many trees that have been changed to stone. Petrified oak wood has been found in an aluminous earth at Hildesheim. In this same district near the citadel of Marienberg there is a hill abounding in petrified tree trunks, the ends of which sometimes project from the hill. These tree trunks are very long and may be found in heaps. There is a black earth in the center of each tree. The trees resemble the marble from Hildesheim that I have mentioned before in that they give off an odor of burnt horn when struck with a piece of iron or another stone. The two stones are of the same material. Actually nature produces certain stones that resemble trees and these must be carefully examined for bark, heart, etc. If these are missing it is evident that they are not petrified trees but only natural stones which resemble them. The trees of Hildes­heim are of this origin. We have no way of knowing if the tree trunk that Jovianus Pontanus found on Cape Pausilypus, when a part of the moun­tain broke away during a storm, was a petrified tree or not. It is not stated whether this was a stone that looked like wood or a piece of petrified wood. The petrified wood found in the aluminous earth of Hildesheim contains mineral ebony. Small quantities of this mineral occur in a similar fashion in hollows in certain other stones. Theophrastus also knew of this occurrence of ebenum in rocks. The wood containing the ebenum mentioned above is black and without branches or fruit. When polished it has a luster similar to horn, solid and light and with an appearance similar to jet but it is completely different. This ebenum is unaffected by fire while jet burns readily and is completely consumed. Branching ebenum of this type from Venice was once given me by a friend who thought it to be the black coral called antipathes by the Greeks. Pausanias, following a certain Cyprian physician, has written that it represents a root that grew within the earth with neither foliage nor fruit and for that reason is very difficult to find,
Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications Page of 251 Book VII marbles, gems in rings and other applications
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