Bloodstone

( Min.) A jaspery variety of quartz, of a dark-green color, variegated with red spots, like drops of blood, (whence the name.) It is frequently made into seal and ring stones, and other small ornamental articles. - Certain kinds of hematitic iron ore were called B. by the ancients, because (as Theophrastus says) they seemed "as if formed out of concreted blood." At the present day the term is more especially restricted to the hard and compact hematite, which is made into burnishers, and which po e es the valuable property of laying on gold or silver leaf without fraying or tearing it; it should be of a deep red color, free from flaws, close-grained, and susceptible of a fine polish. Galicia, in Spain, is the country from which the finer descriptions of this variety of hematite are almost exclusively obtained.