Agate

“ The “pleasant scent of the agate”—obtainable most truly by rubbing together two polished specimens—is lauded by Pliny, and Orpheus recommends that the “changeful agate” be steeped in wine to improve the flavour. Powdered and bound on wounds, it healed them, and Rabbi Benoni of 14th century fame advised that an agate be held in the mouth to quench thirst and soothe fever. ”

“ Over the sea, quite near the shore, were trying to rise, one beyond another, at wider and wider intervals, vapours of a pitchy blackness but also of the polish and consistency of agate, of a visible weight, so much so that the highest among them, poised at the end of their contorted stem and overreaching the centre of gravity of the pile that had hitherto supported them, seemed on the point of bringing down in ruin this lofty structure already half the height of the sky, and of precipitating it into the sea. ”

“ King Kurigalzu (circa 1300 B.C.) once sent to the temple of Bel, among other articles of agate and lapis-lazuli, an inscribed votive cylinder of agate. Then we priests suddenly received the command to make for the statue of the god Ninib a pair of earrings of agate. We were in great dismay, since there was no agate as raw material at hand. ”

“ AGATE, a term applied not to a distinct mineral species, but to an aggregate of various forms of silica, chiefly Chalcedony (q.v..) According to Theophrastus the agate (achates) was named from the river Achates, now the Drillo, in Sicily, where the stone was originally found. Most agates occur as nodules in eruptive rocks, or ancient lavas, where they represent cavities originally produced by the disengagement of vapour in the molten mass, and since filled, wholly or partially, by siliceous matter deposited in regular layers upon the walls. ”

“ Some Arabian writers advise against the use of powdered agate as an internal medicine unless carefully blended with other substances. An agate worn about the neck banished fear, indigestion and lung troubles. It was recommended by Dioscorides as a charm against epidemics and pestilential diseases. It protected from the bites of serpents and insects, and was bound to 116the horns of oxen to induce a good harvest. ”

“ A kind of agate, of a milky colour, diversified with yellow, bluish, or green tints. The Babylonians have left us a large number of chalcedony cylinders, covered with inscriptions. (See also Agate, Cameos.)
Calceolus (dimin. of Calceus, q.v) . A small shoe or ankle-boot worn by women. There were three kinds: the first had a slit over the instep, which was laced up when the boot was on. A second shape had a very wide opening, and could be fastened above the ankle by a string passed through a hem round the top. In the third description there was neither cord, lace, nor slit. ”

“ CHALCEDONY, AGATE, ETC. CHALCEDONY and agate, and their endless varieties, are composed mainly of silica, but the separate individual crystals are so small as to be invisible to the unaided eyesight, and occasionally are so extremely minute that the structure is almost amorphous. The colour and appearance vary greatly, depending upon the impurities contained in the stone, and, since both have been made a criterion for differentiation of types, a host of names have come into use, none of which are susceptible of strict definition. ”

“ The agate occurs in cobbles that are mostly 3 to 6 inches in diameter, but specimens of gem quality that exceed twice this size are known. The agate varies greatly in design and color. Plume, moss, banded, and sagenitic agate occur in these gravels in a wide variety of colors. The jasper in the Rio Grande gravels is yellow, red, green, or various shades of these and is commonly suspended as angular fragments in clear chalcedony.
Good agate has also been found near Balmorhea in Reeves and Jeff Davis counties and in smaller amounts at numerous other west and south Texas localities. ”

“ This idea is elaborated by Marbodus, Bishop of Rennes, in the eleventh century, who declares that agates make the wearers agreeable and persuasive and also give them the favor of God.38 Still other virtues are recounted by Camillo Leonardo, who claims that these stones give victory and strength to their owners and avert tempests and lightning.39
The agate possessed some wonderful virtues, for its wearer was guarded from all dangers, was enabled to vanquish all terrestrial obstacles and was endowed with a bold heart ”

“ Our imaginary journey into the past has reached its end. We have seen a day at Agate as it might have been 20 million years ago. We have watched the animals going about their daily lives during times of plenty and have seen it as it was later, when death’s heavy hand left a magnificent fossil heritage. This unique place is a window into the past, a window through which we can look back at any time and observe life at Agate millions of years ago.
38 Excavations at Agate Springs
The first fossils were collected in volume in 1904 by Olaf Peterson of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. ”

“ They’d much rather hide than flee their enemies.
These dwellers of the savanna, common during the Miocene Epoch, comprise the major species found at the Agate Fossil Beds. Their discovery in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was highly important to the young science of paleontology. In those decades of major discoveries, large gaps remained in the story of evolution. Quarries like those at Agate helped provide the missing pieces of the puzzle. In their time, the discoveries at Agate were an important contribution toward understanding the world far beyond the dawn of mankind. ”

“ Agates worked by the hand of man are found in great quantities in the bone beds of the Godavery. Some javelin heads in sandstone, basalt, and quartz, with scrapers and knives, most of them flat on one side and rounded on the other, appear to be even more ancient than the agate implements. Some of the celts resemble those of European type, others the flint weapons found in Egypt, and the clumsiest forms may be compared to those still in use amongst the natives of Australia. ”

“ Professor Romaine Newbold, who publishes this dream, explains that the professor had unconsciously reasoned out his facts, the difference of colour in the two pieces of agate disappearing in the dream. The professor had heard from Dr. Peters of the expedition, that a room had been discovered with fragments of a wooden box and chips of agate and lapis lazuli. The sleeping mind “combined its information,” reasoned rightly from it, and threw its own conclusions into a dramatic form, receiving the information from the lips of a priest of Nippur. ”

“ As the base of the food chain, plants carry the influences of climate on to the plant-eating animals. From the numerous animal fossils found at Agate we have learned most of what is known about the environment of that time. Sediments tell a good part of the story, and floras from other localities help, but much of Agate’s ancient ecology must be inferred from the bones.
Today, standing on the porch of the visitor center or walking along the path to University and Carnegie Hills, visitors find themselves in the midst of the shortgrass prairie. ”

“ Moss-agate, or mocha-stone, contains moss-like inclusions of some fibrous mineral. Onyx is an agate with regular bands, the layers having sharply different colours; when black and white, it has, in days gone by, been employed for cameos. Sardonyx is similar in structure, but red and white in colour. Agate is used in delicate balances for supporting the steel knife-edges of the balance itself and of the panholders, 248and is largely employed—especially when artificially coloured—for umbrella handles and similar articles. ”

“ Rising and falling alternately through the rocks the water leaves a mark of each advance or retreat in the form of an additional 36 layer deposited upon the interior walls of the cavity. Agates, therefore, grow from the outside inward. The process may go on until the cavity is entirely filled or may cease at any time. If water remains in the cavity for some time crystals, such as are sometimes seen, will be formed. The nodule of silica or agate formed by the percolating waters is harder and more resistant than the surrounding rock. ”

“ On the crest of the point is Agate Park, seven acres of forest and beach set aside as a recreational area. The names, Agate Pass, Agate Point, and Agate Park, were bestowed in honor of Alfred T. Agate, an artist with the Wilkes Expedition of 1841. Right from the junction, the main road bears northeasterly across the island through a pleasantly wooded country. Here and there, a small farm is leisurely cultivated. PORT MADISON, 16.5 m. (25 alt., 576 pop.) , once a leading industrial center on Puget Sound, is now a quiet little shore village sprawling along both sides of its almost toy harbor. ”

“ On each side of the head, they wear an ornament of gold and rough cut agate, and round it, above the ears, a bandeau of coral, cowrie shells, or agates; several light chains of silver, having round bells at the end of them, are attached to the hair, and when dancing, produce a pleasing sound. Their necks are loaded with gaudy necklaces, and one-half of their well-formed bosoms is shown by the arrangement of their drapery: their arms are bare to the shoulders, having above the elbow neat silver rings of the thickness of a goosequill, and on the wrists one or two broader and flatter. ”

“ In spite of the many fine natural colors in agates, they are sometimes artificially colored, in many cases by methods which are kept as “trade secrets.” The color seldom penetrates far; so that even slight chipping reveals whether an inferior agate has been taken and colored up, or whether the stone 108 is natural. Moss agates are chalcedony which has inclosed dendritic masses of some one of the manganese compounds as shown under manganite, p. 73.
Onyx is a variety of agate where the bands are alternately black and white ”

“ Ducks are sometimes [361] found similarly ornamented in spots and wavy lines. These figures are only 3 inches in height. To these days belong the solid agate Cats made of two or three clays of different colours intermingled, and highly glazed. These are some 5 or 6 inches in height. We give an illustration of this type of ware (p. 171) . Bears in agate ware the same nature, and small figures of doll-like individuals are also found.
The elder Astbury (1736–1743) has been credited with a series of figures of men, some 6 inches in height, playing bagpipes or other instruments. ”

“ A slow ride of eight miles placed us in a safe gorge draining a dull-looking, unpromising block. Here we at once found, and found in situ for the first time, the chalcedony which strews the seaboard-flat. This agate, of which amulets and signet-rings were and are still made, and which takes many varieties of tints, lies in veins mostly striking east-west; and varying in thickness from an inch to several feet. The sequence is grey granite below, the band of chalcedony, and above it a curious schistose gneiss-formation. ”

“ Agate was used metaphorically for a very diminutive person, in allusion to the small figures cut in agate for rings. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2) , Falstaff says: “I was never manned with an agate till now; but I will inset you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel.” In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1) Hero speaks of a man as being “low, an agate very vilely cut.”
[25] See Grimm’s “Deutsche Mythologie.”
[26] Thoms’s “Three Notelets on Shakespeare,” 1865, pp. 38, 39.
[27] See Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology,” 1878, p. ”

“ Nature is indifferent—neither cruel nor kind. When times are bad every species is improved, for the strongest and most tenacious survive to reproduce themselves. There are benefits to hardship.
So it was at Agate only a year or so after the day of our visit. The river died for a while. As with many rivers much of its water flowed beneath the surface, through the sand and gravel of the bed. When the ancient Niobrara died there was still water moving through the sands and filling the low spots in its bed. ”

“ It was said to have been the “fortune stone” of the Trojan hero Æneas, protecting him in war, voyages and storms.
The agate is always adorned with a system of bands which exhibit variety in hue, shade and tint. The Chalcedony (See Chalcedony) is more compact and regular in colour, the two stones therefore being easily distinguishable. Swedenborg sets the agate down as the symbol of the spiritual love of good. It is astrologically attached to the martial sign Scorpio.
ALABASTER
“Why should a man whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire, cut in alabaster?” ”

“ Agate, Plate 32, is a banded or cloudy chalcedony which has formed in a cavity, the layers of different color representing deposition from water, carrying first silica with one impurity, then later, silica with another impurity. Gradually the cavity has been thus filled with silica; and when the mass is freed by the weathering away of the surrounding rock, these banded masses are found. Sometimes the manner of deposition has changed, and while the outer part of the cavity was filled with chalcedony, the central part will contain quartz crystals. ”

“ Of the former variety the most abundant is the common nodular agate, or Scotch pebble. In these the central nucleus and other parts composed of pure quartz are unaltered, the flesh-coloured zones, consisting of silex and red oxid of iron, have become more or less adherent to the tongue, have nearly lost their lustre, and have had their hardness much impaired; while the milk-white zones which in the perfect state of the substance were of pure chalcedony, are in every instance reduced to an opake white earth, yielding generally to the nail, and strongly adherent to the tongue. ”