ALABASTER, the came applied by ancient and dern artists to certain kinds of gypsum and calc-sinter. The kinds of gypsum arc the compact and foliated ; and these, cm account of their softness, and the delicate lish they receive, have been long employed in statuary, and frequently also for vases, pillars in the interior of S.c. The gypsum of Volterra, near Florence, which is remarkable for its transludicity, is cut into beautiful figures and vases. When a candle or lamp is put into a vase of this kind, it diffuses a very agreeable and delicate light. It is said the ancients used this mineral in their temples in place of glass, in order that the light might be pale and feeble, and thus harmonize in some measure with the general character of the place. The calc-sinter, when it occurs in large masses, is sometimes cut into statues and vases. The most beautiful kinds, which have a yellowish colour, are found in the Thebaid, situated between the Nile and the Red Sea, near to the town of Alabastron. In one of the pub
lic museums in Paris, the Napoleon Museum, there is a colossal figure of an Egyptian deity, cut in calc-sinter. Older mineralogists, as Boetius de Boot, sir John Hill, Bertrand, and Rome de Lisle, divide alabaster into two kinds, alabastrum, and alabastrites. The alabastrum is gypsum, and the alabastrites is a harder calcareous stone, corresponding in external characters to the calc sinter of modern mineralogists. La Metherie and others, on the contrary, consider the alabastrites as compact gypsum ; and Pliny, under the same denomination, in cludes both gypsum and calc-sinter. See Hauy's Mi neralogie. Brongniart's Mineralogie. Schmieder's Lithur gik. Jameson's Mineralogy. (r)