BLOODSTONE  , the popular name of the

mineral heliotrope, which is a variety of dark green chalcedony or plasma, with bright red spots, splashes and streaks . The green colour is due to a chloritic mineral; the red to haematite . Some coarse kinds are opaque, resembling in this respect jasper, and some writers have sought to restrict the name "bloodstone" to green jasper, with red markings, thus making heliotrope a translucent and bloodstone an opaque stone, but, though convenient, such a distinction is not generally recognized . A good deal of bloodstone comes from India, where it occurs in the Deccan traps, and is cut and polished at Cambay . The stone is used for seals, knife-handles and various trivial ornaments . Bloodstone is not very widely distributed, but is found in the basaltic rocks of the Isle of Rum in the west of Scotland, and in a few other localities .