36 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIS!. 
At this port one can scareely help recalling to mind the 
words of the hymn by Bernard of Cluny, on the glories of the 
Heayenly City :— 
“With jasper glow thy bulwarks, 
Thy streets with emeralds blaze, 
The sardius and the topaz, 
Unite in thee their rays.” 
In the authorised version the English names used for the 
various stones are usually merely adaptations of the original 
Greek terms, and, as has already been indicated, are at the 
present time in some cases applied to totally different stones 
than those which were designated by the original names. Thus, 
according to Pliny, who lived during the New Testament period, 
the topazion or topaz was a hard green stone found on an island 
in the Red Sea. The stone which we call topaz is quite dif- 
ferent from this, while the topaz of Pliny corresponds exactly 
with that which we now call peridot. 
It is thus evident that for a due understanding of this 
aspect of the Bible narrative, we must ascertain in as far as is 
possible, what stone was really meant by any given name in 
Bible times, rather than that for which the name may now be 
used in our own language. 
S. John, to whose writings we are indebted for the vaiu- 
able records in the Book of Revelation, was a contemporary 
of Pliny, who, born in 23 A.D., lost his life in 79 A.D., by the 
eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Herculaneum and Pom- 
peii. Pliny in his works on natural history gives a complete 
account of the knowledge of minerals possessed by students at 
the time when John wrote his books. Taking then the stones 
of the foundations in the order in which they are given by 
John, we may readily ascertain what Pliny says about them. 
The first stone of the foundation, in the Greek, is iaspis, 
which has been translated jasper. Of this stone Pliny says :— 
“There are fourteen varieties which are usually green and trans- 
parent. Many countries produce this stone; that of India is 
like smaragdus in colour; that of Cyprus is hard and a full 
sae-green; and that of Persia and Caspia a sky-blue. On the 
banks of the river Thermodon the iaspis is of an azure colour, 
in Phrygia if is purple; and in Cappadocia of an azure-purple, 
sombre and not refulgent. The best kind is that which has a 
shade of purple, the next best being rose-coloured, and the next 
the stone with the green colour of smaragdus.’* In modern 
