Dictionarium polygraphicum. Chrysolite.

Dictionarium Polygraphicum:
Or, The Whole Body of Arts Regularly Digested.
Vol I.
London: Printed for C. Hitch and C. Davis in Pater-noster Row, and S. Austen in St. Paul's Church Yard. MDCCXXXV.
1735
CHRYSOLITE, a precious stone of a yellow colour. The Chrysolite is the Topaz of the moderns.

CHRYSOLITE, is also a general name which the ancients gave to all precious stones, in which the yellow or gold was the prevailing colour.

When the stone was green, they call'd it Chrysoprasin, the red and blue too had their particular denominations, which express'd their colour, the gold being signified by Chryso; which still began the name.

The modern jewellers call that a Chrysolite, which the ancients call'd a Topaz or Chrysopras, which is a precious stone, green and diaphanous, some of which cast a lustre of gold; this stone is so hard, that it will easily endure the file, and sometimes there are pieces of them found big enough to make statues of, witness that of juba King of Mauritania, made in honour of Queen Arsinoe, wife of Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, of the height of four cubits.


To make a paste for an oriental Chrysolite.
To imitate this stone, take two ounces of natural crystal prepar’d, eight ounces of minium in fine powder, add to it twelve grains of crocus Martis made with vinegar, mixing the whole well together.
Then put the whole into a crucible, and set it in a furnace, leaving it there a little longer that it may have time to purify from the lead.
Then will you have a paste for the oriental Chrysolite, which will appear very admirable, set with a foil in gold.

The way to make CHRYSOLITE.
Take ten ounces of our powder of natural crystal and saturnus glorificatus, (which see) to which add one ounce of crocus martis prepar'd; the whole reduc’d to fine powder, well mix’d, and put into a crucible covered and luted, and bake it as directed for other of the like metals, and you will have a fine chrysolite colour, which will be of the native green.