his
substance runs thus:

"It is to be noticed that we have these rich cassidoin vessels (called
in Latin murrhina) from the East, and that from places otherwise not
greatly renowned, but most within the kingdom of Parthia; howbeit the
principal come from Carmania. The stone whereof these vessels are made
is thought to be a certain humor, thickened as it were in the earth by
heat. In no place are these stones found larger than small tablements
of pillars or the like, and seldom were they so thick as to serve for
such a drinking-cup as I have spoken of already. Resplendent are they
in some sort, but it may rather be termed a gloss than a radiant and
transparent clearness; but that which maketh them so much esteemed is
the variety of colors, for in these stones a man shall perceive
certain veins or spots, which, as they be turned about, resemble
divers colors, inclining partly to purple and partly to white: he
shall see them also of a third color composed of them both, resembling
the flame of fire. Thus they pass from one to another as a man holdeth
them, insomuch as their purple seemeth near akin to white, and their
milky white to bear as much on the purple. Some esteem those cassidoin
or murrhine stones, the richest, which present as it were certain
reverberations of certain colors meeting altogether about their edges
and extremities, such as we observe in rainbows; others are delighted
with certain fatty spots appearing in them; and no account is made of
them which show either pale or transparent in any part of them, for
these be reckoned great faults and blemishes; in like manner if there
be seen in the cassidoin any spots like corns of salts or warts, for
then are they considered apt to split. Finally, the cassidoin stones
are commended in some sort also for the smell that they do yield."

On these words of Pliny a great dispute has arisen. Some think that
onyx is the material described, a conjecture founded on the variety of
colors which that stone presents. To this it is objected, that onyx
and murrha, onyx vases and murrhine vases are alike mentioned by Latin
writers, and never with any hint as to their identity; nay, there is a
passage in which Heliogabalus is said to have onyx and murrhine vases
in constant use. Others, as we have said, think that they were
variegated glass; others that they were the true Chinese porcelain, a
conjecture in some degree strengthened by a line of Propertius:

"Murrheaq. in