

Agate belongs to the chalcedon group in the great family of quartz. It named after its original locality the antique Achates river (today Dirillo in Sicily). We can read first about this stone in the scripts of the Greek natural philosopher, Theoprastus. Its pieces which are similar to ball or almond can be found in volcanic gasbubble caves. After cutting and grinding can be seen the cellurlar or tight geodes, which consist of the coalescence of different contrentrical gapes. Natural nice colorful agates exist, but mostly agates are occured in greyish-brownish „boring” colours. Therefore agates are coloured by special treatments (flooding into different tinctures, sours, heating/ignition, etc.) Mostly the specimens with bright colours are coloured artifically. Today the main localities: Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, USA. We can speak about several kinds of agates, but a part of them are agates only in their names. Agate versions (better known): Botswana agate, star agate, lace agate, agate with dendrit, tree agate, white agate, blue lace agate (striped chalcedon), snake agate, moss agate, eye agate, fire agate, water agate (enhidros).