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One of the layers of a pinkish colour, and chiefly derived from small, decomposed fragments of pumice, is remarkable, from containing numerous concretions. These are generally spherical, from half an inch to three inches in diameter; but they are occasionally cylindrical, like those of iron-pyrites in the chalk of Europe.
It was white, stained on one side with rust-colour, but in the heart veined with a bright yellow metallic substance, in some places running in delicate veins into the stone, in others breaking out in large shining lumps. "That's iron-pyrites," said I, as pat as you please. "Goose!" said the Doctor; "look again."
Magnetite, Titanoferrite, and Iron-pyrites also occur as normal constituents of various igneous rocks, although in very small amount, as also Apatite, or phosphate of lime. The other salts of lime, including its carbonate or calcite, although often met with, are invariably products of secondary chemical action.
The eye-balls are nodules of iron-pyrites, cut hemispherically and highly polished, and are surrounded by circles of hard white shell, similar to that forming the teeth of the wooden mask. The Aztecs made their mirrors of iron-pyrites polished, and are the only people who are known to have put this material to ornamental use.
A man will toil many days and nights among the mountains to find an ingot of gold, which, found, he bears home with infinite pains and just rejoicing; but he would be a fool who should lade his mules with iron-pyrites to justify his labors, however severe. Fickleness! what is it, that we make such an ado about it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usurious interest?
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