418 
AGATE. 
found in the year 1746, near the city of Coburg in 
Franconia. A portion of the jaw of an elephant 
also, in the same state, and weighing nearly twenty 
pounds, has been noticed by La Condamine. But 
it is not to any particular country that these petri- 
factions are confined, since they have been met with 
in most parts of the globe. 
Agates are an article of considerable commerce in 
Germany, where they are formed into a thousand 
different shapes. Boxes of all kinds, coffee-cups, 
saucers, knife-handles, seals, and all sorts of trin- 
kets, are there made of agate. There are twenty- 
six mills employed to polish agates on a river a 
few leagues from Oberstein, and each mill contains 
five stones, of an enormous size, and of more than 
thirty hundred weight. By means of these stones 
the work is carried on with amazing rapidity. As 
the agates near this spot are very abundant, the 
workmen never take the trouble to saw them, but 
merely give them a blow with a hammer; and this, 
from much practice, is so dexterously managed, that 
they generally give the piece nearly the figure they 
desire, and the remainder of the operation is com- 
pleted almost in an instant by the mill-stone. There 
are t$o hundred and fifty men employed in this 
business, besides forty masters, who are called gold- 
smiths, and who first mount the trinkets and then 
sell them at the fairs of Leipsic and Francfort. 
