natural history, the name used by the ancients for an extremely elegant and beautiful species of agate, the ground of which is whitish, variegated with veins of a brighter white. These veins are beautifully disposed in a number of various figures; but generally in many concentric irregular circles, drawn round one or more points. It is common also, in various parts of this stone, to find very beautiful delineations of trees, mosses, sea-plants, and the like, so elegantly expressed, that many have erroneously taken them for real plants included in the substance of the stone; whence the name dendrachates.