The ancients rarely engraved upon the opal, influenced perhaps partly from its enormous value in those times, and partly from its soft and fragile nature. They imitated the gem, however, with such perfection that Pliny declared that it was almost impossible to distinguish the false from the real. Modern gem imitators have utterly failed in producing anything approaching the precious opal in beauty. The assertion of Pliny in regard to the imitation of the glories of this gem has always been received with incredulity by the moderns on account of the failures of our most skilled artisans; but the discoveries among the ancient Phœnician tombs in the island of Cyprus by Di Cesnola rather strengthen Pliny’s remark. In this collection we may view a great and elegant variety of glass-ware exhumed from the tombs of the Phœnician nobility who lived three thousand years ago or more. Many of these vessels gleam with what appear to be iridescent tints of gold, blue, red, and other colors of the loveliest tints, recalling to mind the most beautiful and gorgeous reflections of the opal. Some of the articles are entirely of one color, while others are composed of patches of various hues resembling enormous opals with broad gleams of pure color. Peligot maintains that these superb colors are clue to the effect of great age; and the substance of the glass being separated into laminæ, the colors may be explained by the law of iridescence. But we are half inclined to believe that they may be due to the skill of the artisan in a great measure,--hence the variety of color in different vessels of the same age. In the famous collection of Signor Castellani there is a solid glass ring quite two inches in diameter taken from the ancient Etruscan tombs. This interesting relic exhibits patches of color as bright as the prismatic gleams, and they do not appear to arise from any disintegration of the material, but rather to be produced by the design of the workman. We surely will not ascribe to effect of age the decided iridescent glaze which we see in the Maiolica pottery of Hispano-Moresque objects of the thirteenth or fifteenth centuries, or in the Gubbio products of the sixteenth century.