A lapidary, or, The history of pretious [sic] stones with cautions for the undeceiving of all those that deal with pretious [sic] stones / by Thomas Nicols ...

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Title
A lapidary, or, The history of pretious [sic] stones with cautions for the undeceiving of all those that deal with pretious [sic] stones / by Thomas Nicols ...
Author
Nicols, Thomas.
Publication
Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] :: Printed by Thomas Buck ...,
1652.
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Subject terms
Precious stones -- Early works to 1800.
Link to this Item
http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A52334.0001.001
Cite this Item
"A lapidary, or, The history of pretious [sic] stones with cautions for the undeceiving of all those that deal with pretious [sic] stones / by Thomas Nicols ..." In the digital collection Early English Books Online 2. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A52334.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 10, 2025.

Pages

CHAP. LXIIII. Of the Belemnites, or Lapis Lincis, or Dactylus Ideus.

[Description of the stone.] THis stone is in length a finger, in form and thicknesse like the end of an arrow, outwardly for the most part of a brown and duskish colour, in∣wardly it is hollow, sometimes full of a medullous substance like the pith of wood; sometimes this ca∣vity is full of a chalky substance, sometimes of sand. From the medulla or substance in this cavity, which is the centre of this stone, if you break the stone you shall perceive small lines like beams to dart

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themselves forth unto the circumference. It is called in Greek 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 from its form of an arrow.

Of its kinds.

Of these stones there are some externally of a white colour, some of a duskish colour, and some pellucid like Amber in colour.

If you take some of them and put them into the fire, they will smell like burned bones or horns, and sometimes like Cats pisse: the white ones which are found in Heildshem with a black hard stone in them, smell like Amber.

Cardanus calleth this stone Belemnites, and saith it is found in form like an arrow, and hath in the whole length of it a fissure or cavity, which con∣taineth in it a stone joyned with a golden armature to the stone containing it;* 1.1 and that this stone is not; as some think, the Lyncurius.

The place.

It is found in Borussia, and in Pomerania, in many places of Germany and England: It is found in mount Ida, and from thence it hath its name of Dactylus Ideus: It is found in very great plenty about Wittenberg.

Its vertues.

It is reported of it that if its powder be drunk in some convenient liquour, it will prohibit lustfull dreams, and witchcrafts.

The Saxon and Spanish Physicians take it to be

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of the same nature with the lapis Judaicus, and therefore they use it to break the stone withall.

In officinis this stone is commonly taken for lapis Lyncurius. See Matthiolus.

Notes

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