348 DOMAIN IV. TALCOUS. 



of Geneva, upon whose shores it was found by 

 Saussure. 



Werner and his disciples have continued the 

 ancient name of nephrite to jad, which they 

 class among the magnesian rocks ; and they di- 

 vide it into two sub-species ; the oriental, which 

 is brought from China and the East*, and what 

 they call beilstein, or axe-stone, because it is 

 brought in the form of axes from South Ame- 

 rica, whence it might strictly be called occi- 

 dental. It is to be regretted that no able che- 

 mist, no Klaproth nor Vauquelin, has analysed 

 the various kinds of jad, though a stone of cele- 

 brated beauty and utility ; and it remains un- 

 certain, whether it ought to be referred to the 

 magnesian, the argillaceous, or whether it may 

 , not even be an unctuous keralite, resembling 

 unctuous quartz. It may perhaps even be of 

 various kinds and compositions, afterwards to 

 be distinguished by new appellations. Recent 

 French writers have called it felspath compact 

 jadien-\ y which, they add, is the jad of the lapi- 



* Wad, p. 23, mentions different monuments of nephrite, among 

 which one of a leek green, which, he adds, is giada, and is marked 

 with Persepolitan characters. Roziere brought from Egypt a frag- 

 ment of red granite, marked with the same letters, from a monu- 

 ment which, if I remember right, he discovered in the Desert of Suez. 



f Brard, 166. 



