MODE V. OLLITE. 33 J 



medical qualities continued to his day. The 

 ollites of Zoblitz in Saxony are still well known. 

 Laet, in his treatise on Gems, 1647, 8vo. 

 p. 168, rather confuses the question, as usual 

 with commentators, but quotes Gesner, who 

 seems the fountain of the error, that ophite is a 

 green marble, or porphyry, owing to his merely 

 reading one sentence of Pliny, without adding 

 the subsequent context. Laet says, that he re- 

 ceived from Crusius a fragment upon which he 

 had written, " A fragment of the cup of Ed- Ophite of 



Edward IV. 



ward IV. King of England, formed of the stone 

 called ophites, useful against poison, the gift of 

 H. Morgan, 1.581." This fragment was of a dull 

 green colour, very little translucent, sprinkled 

 with crystalline spots of a bright green, and 

 pretty conspicuous if held before the light. This 

 may have been a serpentine, or ollite, with hex- 

 agonal spots of green mica, or steatite. The 

 erroneous application of the term ophite by the 

 greatest mineralogists, for more than a century, 

 will excuse even a repeated confutation. 



The ollite of Como, which is still in use, is of sites. 

 a foliated texture, and greenish grey colour. 

 That of Saxony, used for tea-caddies, milk-pots, 

 and several other purposes, is of a greenish grey, 

 with irregular veins and spots of black. The 

 noble house of Inverary, the seat of the duke of 



