290 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
XLVI.—Descriprion of A Perroratep Batt or Rock CrystaL sTATED 
TO HAVE BEEN FOUND IN THE CouUNTY Meratu, wit NovEs RESPECTING 
Rock Crystat Giopes on SpHEREs, THEIR LecENDARY History, 
ALLEGED MepicaL AND Maerican Powers, AND PROBABLE HASTERN 
ORIGIN : ALSO ON THE USE OF Rock CrystaL FoR ORNAMENTING 
Iniso Surines and Retrevartes. By Writtiam Frazer, F.R.CS8.L., 
M.R.I.A. 
[Read, May 18, 1884.] 
Transtucent Rock Crystal, as a mineral, is well known under its 
name of Irish Diamond, forming an ordinary essential component of our 
granite rocks, yet it seldom occurs here in sufficiently limpid masses 
and in pieces of adequate bulk to be turned to useful artistic purposes. 
The best and clearest specimens are obtained in the form of rolled peb- 
bles, on the sea shore, at the North of Ireland, where they are locally 
termed ‘‘ Dungiven Crystals.” We also obtain well-formed crystals of 
large size from Donegal, but they are a dark-brown coloured variety 
known as ‘‘Smoky Quartz”’; this variety is often cut and polished by 
seal-cutters under the appellation of cairngorm, a name that should be 
restricted to a different substance, namely, the topaz. 
Rock erystal was so often procured from the peaks of lofty ice- 
covered mountains that its formation in early times was ascribed to the 
protracted freezing and solidifying of water, which theory receives 
grave discussion and reprobation by Solinus, a fact duly recorded by 
Polydor Vergil in his History. 
The spherical bead of limpid rock crystal now exhibited by me to 
the Royal Irish Academy is a moderate sized, but fair example, of this 
special well-recognized class of manufactured objects much prized in 
our collections of antiquities, which from time to time turn up un- 
expectedly in different parts of the British Isles, or are ascertained to 
be in the possession of families by whom they are regarded as precious 
heirlooms ; some of those have long transmitted traditional histories of 
respectable duration, and have gathered a fair amount of legend around 
them. They are valued for alleged wonder-working power over the 
diseases of men and animals ; and, stranger still, their owners even claim 
that by their means we are ‘afforded deep insight into futurity ; hence 
they supply the novelist with useful material for the exercise of his 
imagination, as readers of Sir Walter Scott’s ‘‘Talisman”’ are well 
aware ; for the interest in the ‘‘ Talisman”’ is largely due to a miracu- 
lous amulet, the ‘‘Lee Penny,” which, however, is not composed of 
rock crystal, but of a dark-red stone, set in a groat of Edward IV. 
According to tradition it was brought from the Holy Land in the 14th 
century, by Sir Simon Lockhart, of Lee; to which place and time 
the traditional history of many of these crystal balls in our countries is 
popularly ascribed. 
With reference to the special bead now exhibited, I regret to say 
