Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/236

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Of the selenite I shall have something more to say anon; let us now revert to pearls which Drayton tells us elsewhere may be found by the river Irt, in Westmoreland. He calls them "orient pearls," and would have us believe that they are made of dew (deaw, as our text-book has it) sucked in by shining shells, an origin almost as fanciful as that ascribed to the Austurian steeds, which, in consequence of their swiftness,

{{c|{{sm|"Some have held to be begotten of the wind." }}

Drayton seems to have shared the belief of his age about the origin of crystal, which was seriously accepted as ice, as its name denotes. He refers to it in that one of the Heroical Epistles he penned in the character of Edward the Fourth to Mrs. Shore:—

{{block center|{{smaller block| {{fqm}}How silly is the Polander and Dane To bring us crystal from the frozen main When thy clear skin's transparence doth surpass Their crystal as the diamond doth glass." }}}}

"Whether crystal be ice or some other liquor I omit to dispute," says the cautious and learned Selden, commenting hereupon "yet by the example of amber and coral there may be such an induration, for Solinus out of Pliny mentioneth that in the northerly region a yellow gelly is taken up out of the sea at low tides which he calls Succinum, we amber. So likewise out of the Ligustick deep, a part of the Mediterranean sea, a greenish stalk is gathered which, hardened in the air, comes to be coral, either white or red. Amber, notwithstanding, is thought to drop out of trees," &c. Drayton speaks of a "bastard coral," that belongs to the vegetable world, and "breeds on the moisted skirt with sea-weed fringed about." When

{{block center|{{smaller block| {{gap|10em}}"drawn out of the brack A brittle-stalk becomes from greenish turned to black," }}}} {{rule}}{{smallrefs}}