Search

Publication of a seal of rock crystal in London (British Museum), with an inscription in Aramaic and Hebrew naming the bearer, one Solomon b. Azariah, as grandson (or perhaps son) of an exilarch. An identification of the bearer as Solomon, son of the Jewish exilarch Azariah b. Solomon (c. 975) and grandson of the exilarch Solomon b. Josiah (c. 951–3), is considered, as is the alternative possibility that the grandfather was the exilarch Solomon b. Hisdai (c. 730–58).

Статья посвящена анализу морфологических (форма, декор, цвет и др.) и технологических характеристик бус и привесок, обнаруженных в нескольких погребальных комплексах некрополя у пос. Заозерное в Северо-Западном Крыму, исследованных Крымской археологической экспедицией кафедры археологии МГУ имени М.В. Ломоносова с 1979 по 1985 гг. Украшения некрополя выполнены из стекла, фаянса, полудрагоценных камней (сердолика и горного хрусталя), гагата, янтаря и кости. Полученные результаты говорят о импорте исследованных украшений из районов Передней Азии, Египта и Средиземноморья. Для датирования находок использован главным образом Свод, составленный Е.М. Алексеевой в 1970-е годы, но остающийся до сих пор наиболее значительным изданием, представляющим коллекции бус из различных материалов из многочисленных памятников Северного Причерноморья. Библиографические ссылки Алексеева Е.М. Античные бусы Северного Причерноморья / САИ. Вып. Г1–12 . М: Наука, 1975. 94 с. Алексеева Е.М. Античные бусы Северного Причерноморья / САИ. Вып. Г1–12. М.: Наука, 1978. 104 с. Алексеева Е.М. Античные бусы Северного Причерноморья / САИ. Вып. Г1–12. М: Наука, 1982. 104 с. Дашевская О.Д. Некрополь Беляуса. Симферополь: Предприятие Феникс, 2014. 284 с. Дзнеладзе Е.С. Бусы из могильника Красный Маяк как хроноиндикатор // Археологія і давня історія Украіни. 2015. Вип. 2. С. 191–201. Лихтер Ю.А., Щапова Ю.Л. Гнездовские бусы. По материалам раскопок курганов и поселения // Смоленск и Гнездово (к истории древнерусского города) / Под ред. Д.А. Авдусина. М.: МГУ, 1991. С. 244–260. Попова Е.А., Пежемский Д.В., Беловинцева Н.И. Городище Чайка, некрополь и каменоломня античной эпохи на окраине Евпатории в Северо-Западном Крыму: итоги и перспективы исследования // Исторические исследования. 2015. № 3. С. 76–112. Синика В.С., Тельнов Н.П. Скифский курган 116 первой половины III в. до н. э. у с. Глиное // Древности. Исследования и проблемы. Сб. статей в честь 70-летия Н.П. Тельнова / Под ред. В.С. Синики и Р.А. Рабиновича. Кишинев; Тирасполь: Stratum Plus, 2018. С. 223–266. Столярова Е.К. Стеклянные и каменные бусы из позднескифских погребений некрополя у городища «Чайка» // Памятники бронзового и железного веков в окрестностях Евпатории / Отв. ред. Ю. Л. Щапова, И. В. Яценко М.: МГУ, 1993. С. 45–62. Столярова Е.К. Химико-технологическое изучение стеклянных бус из некрополя у пос. Заозерное // Древности Евразии / Отв. ред. С. В. Демиденко, Д. В. Журавлев. М.: ГИМ, 1997. С. 216–226. Храпунов И.Н., Мульд С.А., Стоянова А.А. Позднескифский склеп из могильника Опушки. Симферополь: Доля, 2009. 96 с. Щапова Ю.Л. Очерки истории древнего стеклоделия (по материалам долины Нила, Ближнего Востока и Европы). М.: МГУ, 1983. 200 с. Weinberg G. A Hellenistic Glass Factory on Rhodes: Progress Report // Journal of Glass Studies. Vol. 25. 1983. P. 37.

Los restos de una brillante sustancia metálica parecida al oro en el ajedrez medieval de cristal de roca en la Catedral de Ourense y en el sello de Emessindis en la Catedral de Girona se publican aquí por primera vez, descubrimientos inesperados que abren nuevas vías para investigar la propiedad de tales objetos interculturales en Iberia, sobre todo por gobernantes femeninos, durante la plena Edad Media.

This article discusses an inscribed large crystal rock gem (2.70 x 2.15 x 1.65 cm), retrieved during the excavations at Apollonia-Ars?f. It bears a two-line magical inscription written in linear K?fic script. It is the first magical rock crystal ever found in a proper archaeological context. Based on its appearance, it can only be vaguely dated between the eighth to the twelfth centuries. A late date would make it contemporary to the associated ceramics in that layer. The relative proximity of the find place to Egypt makes an origin of the talisman from F??imid Egypt likely, as may also be suggested in our analytical appendix.

Rock crystal, which the ancients believed was formed by excessively frozen ice, came into fashion in the early years of the Roman Empire, when skilled craftsmen began to push the limits of the medium to new, previously unimagined heights in the form of applied ornament, vessels, and even statuettes. Then as now, large chunks or unusual specimens constituted natural wonders in and of themselves. As the ancients themselves marveled, the perfection of crystal facets surpassed the very limits of a gem-cutter’s skill, and rock crystal’s unrivaled limpidity was broadly deemed to be superior to that of even the most splendid examples of colorless glass, itself a hallmark of Roman technical achievement. This article examines some of the ways in which the marvelous formation and celebrated transparency of crystal turned on the classical concept of the medium, which since Aristotle had been understood as an intervening space that separates an object of vision from its beholder. Given that a diverse range of substan...

The 13th century saw the rise of the multi-material art of the cristalleri, who, using imported rock crystal, created objects from cut or baccellato blocks, or applied thin sheets of crystal to miniatures (creating pseudo-enamels) or to embossed foils, mounted together with inserts of red jasper or with filigree. The precious objects thus created were both secular (including precious chess-sets) and religious (especially crosses and reliquaries). At the end of the 13th and throughout the 14th century the technique of translucent enamel was developed. No object with miniatures has survived in Venice, where only the Treasure of St Mark’s includes items connected with this specific Venetian art. It was thus principally designed for export, a product of the artistic (but also commercial) creativity of Venice, bringing together the fruits of the loot from Constantinople (relics) and imported minerals, and creating liturgical furnishings and luxury secular articles for a market that extended even beyond the confines of Europe.

From the reports of travelers and historians, people learn of the crafting of beautiful rock crystal and metalwork objects in the Cairo bazaar and, during the later Mamluk period, of beautiful gilded and enameled glass being produced in commercial areas of Aleppo and Damascus. Given the diverse subject matter of the manuscripts, people may speak of a patronage base allying the intelligentsia to the merchant class within a more broadly conceived bourgeoisie, one whose interests and aesthetic preferences, as compared with those of the court, might be productively investigated through such illustrated manuscripts. One of the frontispieces of a wonderful illustrated manuscript contains clearly Christian iconographical elements, and among the Christian community of Iraq and Syria, people encounter ample evidence for the patronage and production of metalwork, ceramics, and gilded and enameled glass as well as manuscripts.

Earspools (also known as earflares or earplugs) served throughout the pre-Columbian Americas not only as aesthetic devices but also as signifiers of social status. In the Postclassic Era, the act of piercing the earlobes of children was practiced among the Aztec during the quadrennial ceremony of Izcalli as part of a ritual program of events marking maturation (Sahagun, 1951a; Joyce, 2000, p. 479). The actual wearing of earspools, however, only began when an Aztec youth reached the status of adulthood in his or her mid-teens. Earspools in earlier contexts in the Basin of Mexico and in other parts of the pre-Columbian Americas may have served similarly to indicate adulthood or other aspects of social identity. Often finely crafted, earspools could be fashioned from materials ranging from clay, wood, and shell to copper, gold, silver, and such stones as slate, obsidian, serpentine, jade, turquoise, and rock crystal. In Mexico earspools can be divided into four basic types: solid cylinders, rings, flared rings with closed throats, and composite forms. Technologies for producing earspools varied from hand modeling, molding, and assemblage to sawing, chipping, and abrading. Although nearly all figurines excavated at Basin-of-Mexico formative-period sites depict men and women wearing earspools, examples of these ornaments themselves have not been recovered in numbers consistent with the populations of these sites. George C. Vaillant (1930, p. 38) speculated that many formative-period earspools may have been fashioned from organic materials that disintegrated over time. Perishable materials were certainly employed to make earspools more than a thousand years later, as the sixteenth-century missionary Bernardino Sahagun (1951a, p. 151) noted Aztec men wearing wooden earspools painted to simulate turquoise. Vaillant’s report on excavations at Ticoman (1931, pp. 295–296) provides a concise typology and chronology of formative-period terracotta earspools in the Basin of Mexico. Early examples, typically measuring between 2 and 3.5 cm in diameter and 1–1.5 cm in width, were modeled by hand as solid cylinders with flattened faces and slightly concave sides (Fig. 1). Ranging in color from buff to black (the former fired in an oxidation and the latter a reduction atmosphere), they were sometimes slipped and burnished. Occasionally they were incised with simple linear or punctuate patterns, and rare examples were indented on one face. Color was added through pigments coldapplied to surfaces, since glazes were unknown in the pre-Columbian Americas. Ring-shaped terracotta earspools, a second ear-ornament type appearing in formative-period Mexico, were modeled in clay from which all coarse inclusions had been carefully removed. Thin walled, these varied in shape from hollow cylinders with a slight concavity at the midsection to straight-sided cylinders with walls at both ends turned outward to form circular flanges. Such earspools resemble pulley wheels (Fig. 1). Occasionally the flanges were modeled, and in some cases, pigments were applied to the surfaces. A third type of formative-period terracotta earspool found at Basin-of-Mexico sites (Vaillant’s “ornate” type) consists of a hollow cylinder with an outward flare at one end. The throat of the flared end was closed to form a throat disk, a circular wall sometimes pierced with geometric openwork designs or carved with relief imagery. Too fragile for burnishing, such earspools were often coated

The Metropolitan Museum of Art did not participate in the feverish bidding and, therefore, did not acquire anything directly at the sale. Nevertheless, a number of objects formerly in the Musee Spitzer, as it was knowna collection now infamous for its many fake and altered artworks2-subsequently entered the Metropolitan's collections. Finely wrought pieces of goldsmiths' work, rock crystal, hard stone, ceramics, and sculpture were either purchased independently from others or were received from such well-known benefactors as

The first lenses (ca. Vth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. These lenses are found in The Louvre Museum in Paris and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. They were components of extraordinary eye constructs in statues which had unique qualities. Namely, the "eyes" appear to follow the viewer as he/she rotates about these statues in any direction. This effect can be photographed and reproduced 2620-2400 B.C., 4620-4400 Before Present=B.P.) appeared mainly during the IVth and optically. This effect has been modeled here. The lenses were ground from high quality (!) rock crystal (a form of quartz, n approximately 1.46). Each had a convex and highly polished front "corneal" surface. Thus, in a sense, these were multifocal lenses. The iris aperture may or may not have been open to a substantial posterior "vitreous" cavity formed largely by curved copper plates which extended forward to create the lid structures of these eyes. Were these a form of schematic eyes? Could such fine quality and complex (sophisticated) lenses be the first lenses? Clearly, the observer was intended to look at these eyes and follow their apparent movements. The total structure of these eyes indicated an advanced understanding of ocular anatomy and a surprising knowledge of optics. There are many questions.

Comparatively few holographs survive in the vast body of Queen Elizabeth I’s correspondence. Understandably, most letters dealing with the run-of-the-mill tasks of ruling a kingdom and diplomacy were composed and written by court ministers and officials. By comparison with the Queen’s other holograph correspondences, such as her letters to James VI and Henry IV, the collection of letters written to Francis, Duke of Anjou (1555–84), or, as he was universally known, “Monsieur,” heir to the French throne, is particularly significant, since it bears on private just as much as public matters. In it, it is to be hoped that the queen’s intimate voice will be heard, one which is not mediated by officials, translators and scribes. That the queen was greatly attached to these letters is beyond doubt, and is best shown by her careful correction and selection of letters to Anjou copied in other hands.1 The letters edited below are not the texts of the letters as received by Anjou, but copies retained in England, part of the archive of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the queen’s first minister, now at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire: Anjou’s copies of Elizabeth’s letters do not seem to have survived.2 The texts of the letters are framed within a short outline of the progress of the protracted and complicated negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou that took place intermittently between 1578 and 1584.

The story of the Uffizi Gallery, emblematic monument to the Florentine Renaissance, is still oddly unknown. One of the forefathers of modern European museums, they were built by Giorgio Vasari to cater for Cosimo I’s public offices, and were later partly transformed into a gallery by Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–1587). Laboratories of art and alchemy were placed side by side by the Grand Dukes Francesco I and Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1587–1609) to facilitate collaboration between artists and scientists. Goldsmiths, jewellers, cabinetmakers, sculptors, painters, and cutters of semi-precious stones exchanged not only equipment, but also theoretical and technical knowledge with the alchemists who worked in the Uffizi. The pieces that survive demonstrate that the style of the objects created there was a direct result of this collaboration. Thanks to the combined study of archival documents and unpublished maps, the artists’ workshops and the alchemists’ fonderia (foundry) can now be located inside the building. Moreover, thanks to an unpublished inventory, we can easily visualise the organisation of the fonderia laboratories, their furniture and the tools that were used. After a short historical introduction, this paper focuses on the material aspects of this collaboration: the working processes, the exchange of instruments between the laboratories, their location in the building and the purpose and destination of the art objects produced.

This article reconsiders the significance of artistic reuse in medieval Venice, examining the reinvention of three distinct artifacts of diverse provenance into a unified artwork in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century in the ducal church of San Marco. Through an in-depth analysis of the material history of the work, known as the Grotto of the Virgin, this essay aims to solve one of the enigmas that surround its making and meaning: its function. The grotto is here associated with the feast of the Purification of the Virgin and identified as an unusual example of a light holder. By proposing a new approach to the study of the grotto and an innovative interpretation of its function and meaning in Venice, the article also addresses broader art historical questions concerning the nature of composite artifacts and the methodologies available for their study, the importance of the Fourth Crusade in the history of the treasury of San Marco, and the significance of artistic reuse in the constru...

In this essay, I explore the physical features of the six French holograph letters written by Elizabeth I to Francis, Duke of Anjou (1555–84) edited in the previous chapter in this volume. All six of these letters can be found in the collection of Cecil Papers (CP) at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, alongside other letters from Elizabeth to Anjou, scribal copies of other letters from Elizabeth to Anjou, letters from Anjou to Elizabeth, and other documents associated with the negotiations for the French match at the turn of the 1580s.

The oldest documents revealing the spread of chess in medieval Christian Europe come from the Catalan counties and the Eastern Pyrenees. The aim of this paper is to add two new documentary evidences which confirm the presence of rock crystal chess pieces both in the abbey of Santa Maria de Ripoll and in the cathedral of Roda de Isabena. Additionally, the present study tries to reexamine our current knowledge regarding the exceptional set of pieces coming from the collegiate church of Sant Pere in Ager, suggesting it may have been a donation from one of the descendants of Arnau Mir de Tost, who were the viscounts of Ager of the Cabrera family and later became counts of Urgell.

I here suggest that in the Early Dynastic period flint was ideologically important at least partly because of its lustrous qualities. During later periods, metal, and particularly arsenical copper took over this role. Archaeological evidence shows that in Early Dynastic Egypt pale flint and rock crystal were frequently selected for both grave goods and jewelry and that the luster of flint was enhanced by polishing. By luster I mean the scintillating qualities of whiteness and shininess. However, this emphasis on flint's lustrous qualities decreases dramatically around 2600 B.C., the end of the Third Dynasty. Not only does flint cease to be used in graves, but archaeological evidence for its ritual use declines, and often that ritual use is related to its aesthetics. At the same time, arsenical copper, which is lighter colored than pure copper, takes the place of flint in graves. It seems flint was literally outshone.

In the course of the sixteenth century, enthusiasm for collecting assumed thitherto unknown proportions in Europe. The artificialia included paintings, modern and antique sculptures, as well as a great variety of precious and rare handcrafted objects made of gold, ivory, rock crystal or semi-precious stones and other valuable materials. From 1579 to 1588, the year of his death, Gonzalo de Liano traveled to Italy as frequently as five times on behalf of Philip II. In the 1580s, Philip II used his court jester Gonzalo de Liano in order to facilitate the smooth mediation and transfer of diplomatic gifts between Italy and Spain. Although several researchers have devoted extensive study to jesters and dwarves at the Spanish court, especially Jose Luis Moreno Villa and Fernando Bouza, the figure of Gonzalo de Liano has previously remained largely overlooked. Keywords:Gonzalo De Liano; King Philip II; Spain

Robert Duncan’s decision to entitle his two final volumes Ground Work is significant insofar as it is a title that immediately emphasizes the poet’s insistence upon derivations and source material. That is, the title alludes to the question of its own sources, as if to ask, what is the groundwork for this work; what has led to its inception? We could answer these implied questions simply by listing any of the numerous allusions and quotations in Ground Work, citing Dante, Plato, and Whitman, among many others. However, it is important also to note the sources for this late work in Duncan’s own early work. In an interview with Howard Mesch, Duncan singles out his early poem “An Essay at War” as the poem that “proposed pretty much the process of my later poetry.”1 In the pages that follow, I would like to explore this statement by considering how this important poem is transitional for Duncan—how it could be said to lay a groundwork for his late work.

In Shakespeare’s time, a mirror in the mind, a speculum, made speculative thought, that is to say, contemplative forms of thought, ultimately possible. I want to get to my analysis of speculation in the playwright’s Troilus and Cressida by way of a not-too-lengthy preliminary account of Early Modern faculty psychology and its incorporation in certain plays of Shakespeare. Sir John Davies’ late Elizabethan popular poem Nosce Teipsum (1599) constitutes a typical account of Early Modern faculty psychology in which the basis for the claim in my first sentence becomes apparent. Davies terms the “Fantasie,” humankind’s faculty of imagination, “Wit’s looking-glasse.”1 According to Davies, the following mental gymnastics then occur: The Wit, the pupill of the Soule’s cleare eye, And in man’s world, the onely shining starre; Lookes in the mirror of the Fantasie, Where all the gatherings of the Senses are. From thence this power [the Wit] the shapes of things abstracts, And them within her passiue part receiues; Which are enlightned by that part which acts, And so the formes of single things perceiues. But after, by discoursing to and fro, Anticipating, and comparing things; She doth all vniversall natures know, And all effects into their causes brings. When she rates things and moues from ground to ground, The name of Reason she obtaines by this; But when by Reason she the truth hath found, She standeth fixt, she VNDERSTANDING is. And as from Senses, Reason’s worke doth spring, So many reasons understanding gaine; And many understandings, knowledge bring; And by much knowledge, wisdome we obtaine. So, many stayres we must ascend vpright Ere we attaine to Wisdome’s high degree; So doth this Earth eclipse our Reason’s light. Which else (in instants) would like angels see.2

Etude de la typologie et de la symbolique des lampes de cristal, et par extension, de verre, de l'âge islamique medieval.

Human beings have been fascinated by brightly colored minerals since prehistoric times. The earliest gemstones probably were found as small, polished pebbles lying in rivers and streams or in deposits of heavily weathered aggregates (Arem 1977). Initially, these objects may have been carried by hand or in small containers as highly prized personal possessions. Some were tied together or pierced for use as beads, and eventually adhesives were developed in order to secure the stones to metal settings.

Humans have been carving stone since the Paleolithic. Figure 6.1 shows a famous early example. Throughout the Mediterranean world, the carving of stone vessels dates from the Neolithic period and continued through the Greco-Roman era. However, the apex of carving was reached in the late Predynastic periods of Egypt and Mesopotamia and in the Early Bronze Age of Greece. Various soft stones were employed, the most popular being limestone, basalt, alabaster, serpentine, marble, slate, chlorite, selenite, steatite, and gypsum. The repertory of shapes and sizes was enormous. Professional carvers produced everything from huge amphorae to small, delicate alabaster and amulets. At times the selection of lithologies for the manufacture of a class of objects is puzzling. Heizer (1956) reports that the inhabitants of Kodiak Island, Alaska, from 500 to 1750 ACE, used local diorite and granite for lamps rather than the available softer soapstone, slate, and limestone.

A rare, if not unique, example of a surviving personal possession of the best-known English queen of the twelfth century is the so-called Eleanor of Aquitaine vase, in the Louvre Museum in Paris.1 This pear-shaped vessel of rock crystal (a semi-precious form of quartz), 37.3 cm in height, is mounted on a circular base of silver and gold on which has been carved a semi-abstract floral design encrusted with jewels. Topping the vase is a second metallic mounting that gradually tapers in three distinct stages of similar design to a narrow opening at the top. A projecting hinge indicates that originally it could be closed by a cap, now lost.

The early history of lenses is controversial. The author has sought to address the problem by identifying lens elements (mainly convex/plano) which remain associated with objects intended to be viewed through them (i.e., in their original context). These are found in museums in sculptures, rings, pendants, etc. A number of outstanding examples will be illustrated in the talk; these sophisticated pieces of art are certainly not first constructs. Most are of rock crystal, rose quartz, or glass. Lenses have origin among artisans rather than scientists. Clearly, skills were often lost and rediscovered. Early lens-like objects have been found broadly in the eastern Mediterranean area/Middle East, in France, in Italy (Rome), and possibly in Peru and Scandinavia, etc. To date, the earliest lenses identified in context are from the IV/V Dynasties of Egypt, dating back to about 4500 years ago (e.g., the superb `Le Scribe Accroupi' and `the Kai' in the Louvre; added fine examples are located in the Cairo Museum). Latter examples have been found in Knossos (Minoan [Herakleion Museum]; ca. 3500 years ago); others had origin in Greece (examples in the Athens National Archeological Museum and the British Museum equals BM), in Rome (Metropolitan Museum, NY; BM; Vatican Museums; Bologna Archeological Museum), etc. Also. of great interest is the study of possible lens applications. This is a fascinating scientific, artistic and intellectual project.

In 1932, Mexican archaeologist and ethnohistorian Alfonso Caso announced a discovery that still stands as one of the richest and most famous finds in the Americas. Excavations at Monte Alban, a site in the highlands of southern Mexico's Valley of Oaxaca (pronounced "wahha-ka"), had yielded a two-chambered tomb containing more than 500 finely crafted artifacts. These included objects of gold, silver, copper, jade, turquoise, rock crystal, obsidian, and pearl. Most striking was a gold pectoral, an expertly worked piece of ceremonial gear consisting of a chest plate connected to an unusual mask of a human head topped by an elaborate headdress. The lower part of the mask shows large teeth set in a skeletal jaw. The burial, dubbed Tomb 7 by its discoverers, contained the skeletal remains of at least nine individuals. The most complete single skeleton, known as Skeleton A, lay at the tomb's western end. Skeleton A and its associated artifacts date to about A.D. 800, a time when either of two regional cultures may have buried their dead in Tomb 7. Monte Alban was first settled around 500 B.C. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 700 it served as the capital of the Zapotec empire. Thereafter, rulers from the Zapotec and Mixtec (pronounced "meesh-tek") cultures apparently vied for control of Oaxaca and surrounding areas until the Spanish took over in 1521. Caso and his colleagues published a monograph in 1969 identifying Skeleton A as a 55to 60-year-old man who, along with other individuals, had been buried in a reopened tomb from the Zapotec era. Caso regarded the artifacts near Skeleton A as ritual paraphernalia of an important priest, some of which may have been worn when the holy man dressed up as a deity to perform ceremonial functions. The elegant gold pectoral represented a male god depicted in one of eight Mixtec codices, Caso held. These codices are painted pictorial manuscripts that survived the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Archaeologists generally accept Caso's interpretation and extol his careful excavations and documentation of what he found. There's a problem, though: Caso may have overlooked the real significance of his stunning finds. Skeleton A most likely belonged to a woman who

One of the lessons Beckett had learned from his study of the sources of Joyce’s works was enunciated by Giambattista Vico: before the concept was the metaphor, and before the articulation of metaphor was song. Whether or not this historical claim is true for the race of mankind, it rings true for the experience of every living man, who hears sounds of words long before he is capable of articulating the least of his thoughts. And this is as true of the mother tongue as it is of any adopted one. The poets amongst us needed no convincing, addicted already to the sense of sound as a means of conveying the sounds of sense; and Beckett has always been first and foremost a poet, an artist working with words.

Unlike the usual practice in botany or zoology, the naming of minerals follows no set rules. The large number of about 6000 mineral names, while not even close to the number of species in either the plant or animal kingdom, results from the unfortunate fact that there may be more than one name in use for one and the same mineral - often superfluous and obselete synonyms. Most are names for color variations in the same mineral and over hundreds of years of usage have become deeply entrenched. The red variety of the mineral corundum (preferred name) is ruby, while the blue variety is known as sapphire. Water clear, colorless quartz is called rock crystal and the colored varieties are amethyst (violet), rose quartz (pink), smoky quartz (brown), and citrine (yellow). Similar examples can be found in numerous other cases.

‘Our fate has changed, our gloomy prospects are brightening, and that fortune so long a stranger is beginning to smile upon us’, Woronzow Greig wrote his mother in excitement at hearing of her pension. He went on to declare, in words that not only reveal her children’s attitude toward their mother’s science but express the sentiments felt by many of her circle and others, his admiration of Peel

The difficulty in appraising antique and modern wristwatches is the time it takes to get information about the product. Some of the most important data in your personal price-and-research records will be the notes you accumulate on watches. To keep from spending an inordinate amount of time looking for comparable watches, set up some file folders marked with the names of major makers—Audemars Piquet, Baume & Mercier, and so on. In these folders, keep every scrap of price information you can find about individual watches from newspaper advertisements, jewelry trade journals, and upscale consumer magazines. Even though the prices become outdated, you will have a record of styles and the names of the stores carrying those particular brands so that you may more easily scout the market for comparable items and current retail prices.

American cows are sometimes fed paper and card-board reports the journalist and hobby farmer O. Schell in his book “Modern Meat”. Their often pure corn diet does not contain enough fibers, and since fibers are good for digestion, paper and card-board fibers must help to overcome constipation. The TIME book reviewer read it in dismay and speculated that farmers certainly will soon feed plastics to the critters. How greedy: instead to feast on juicy natural grass, cows will have to munch on such unnatural materials like paper and card-board and the even less natural plastics. Nobody feeds plastics to cows, of course, and nobody will probably ever do it, but the specter of our plastics society is rising its ugly head again ...

IN the latest edition of Carpenter on the microscope at p. 119 occurs the following, evidently from the pen of the late Dr. Dallinger:—“There is in the British Museum a remarkable piece of rock crystal, which is oval in shape and ground to a plano-convex form, which was found by Mr. Layard during the excavations of Sargon's Palace at Nimroud, and which Sir David Brewster believed was a lens designed for the purpose of magnifying. If this could be established it would, of course, be of great interest, for it has been found possible to fix the date of its production with great probability as not later than 721–705 B.C. … we spent some hours in the careful examination of this piece of worked rock crystal, which, by the courtesy of the officials, we were permitted to photograph in various positions, and we are convinced that its lenticular character as a dioptric instrument cannot be made out. There are cloudy striae in it, which would prove fatal for optical purposes, but would be even sought for if it had been intended as a decorative boss; while the grinding of the ‘convex’ surface is not smooth but produced by a large number of irregular facets, making the curvature quite unfit for optical purposes. In truth it may be fairly taken as established that there is no evidence of any kind to justify us in believing that lenses for optical purposes were known or used before the invention of spectacles.”