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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
BOOK VII
167
being found only in Ethiopia by people who know how to search for it.18 There are certain springs and rivers that will petrify gloves, bones and other substances that are thrown into them without changing the original shape. "And bones, dissolving, wasting away with the body often" having been changed into stone have been found recently near a certain river that flows from a mountain falsely named for the pine tree it is supposed to support. They have found bones of animals changed to stone in the alumi­nous earth of Hildesheim, They have found the petrified bones of some marine monster as well as the teeth of fish in a similar black and unctuous earth near Lunenberg. This earth is used in making bricks. Theophrastus has written, according to Pliny's translation into the Latin, that bones are produced within the earth and bone-like stones are to be found there also. Mutianus has written that mirrors, skin scrapers, clothing and sandals were changed into stone when left in a quarry in Troy. When trees and roots, bones and other objects are changed into stone they become very hard. The stream from a fountain in Parparus makes the earth stone-like when it sinks into it because of a petrifying juice and it is in this same manner that earths along underground channels are made stone-like when they absorb the water flowing along the channel. The stones which have congealed from this petrifying juice alone, either within the earth or outside it, are usually soft and fragile. Such stones hang from caverns and underground passages in those localities I have already mentioned in Book II of De Natura Eorum Quae Effluunt Ex Terra. A small rivulet near a small fountain in Cepusius has been changed into a soft white stone in this manner. A similar soft white stone settles from the warm water of underground channels or hangs from the back of the channels in the form of icicles. This stone is called tofus because it is porous. The Greeks call it πώρος. Pliny has named it pumex. Stones have been found near the hot springs of Karl the Fourth composed of a large number of units ce­mented together. The units are as porous as a honey-comb, hemispherical and the size of a pea. They formed from dripping hot water.19
Earthen vessels are found within the earth with the neck commonly constricted and the body swollen. They may have one, two or three han­dles and some have lids. They are dug up in many places but particularly in Ferteslieb, Saxony, near the village of Matthias Schulenberg in a vine­yard about two miles from the castle of Sricca. They are also found in Lusatia near the town of Liben, ten miles from Lucca; in Thuringia on Mt. Seberg, a spear's throw from Stein, a citadel of the Vicelebi. The ignorant and uneducated people of Saxony and Lusatia have been per­suaded that these vessels have been produced within the earth while the people of Thuringia have been led to believe that the dwarfs who formerly inhabited an excavation on Mt. Seberg used them. Actually they are jars
18 This must refer to black or dark colored petrified wood and possibly concretions. 18 Pisolite, a variety of limestone composed of small hemispherical concretions.
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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