The eyes set as
precious stones in rings, and so as to touch immediately the flesh, are
worn by the inhabitants on the fingers; but the tongues are fastened
about the arm, or suspended from the neck.
Paul Bucconi, a Sicilian nobleman, treated this notion of the eyes and
tongues of serpents as a mere vulgar error; and maintains that they
either constitute a particular species of stone produced in the earth,
or in the stones of the island of Malta, as in their matrix; or that
they are nothing more than the petrified teeth of some marine fish;
which is also the opinion of Fabius Columna, Nicholas Steno and other
physicians and anatomists.
It seems to this noble author that the glossopetrae should be classed in
the animal kingdom, because, being burnt, they are changed into cinders
as bones, before they are reduced into a calx or ashes, whilst calcined
stones are immediately reduced into a calx. He further says, that the
roots of the glossopetrae are often found broken in different ways,
which is an evident argument that they have not been produced by nature,
in the place they are digged out of, because nature forms other fossils,
figured entirely in their matrix, without any hurt or mutilation.
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