Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Spica testacea

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

SPI'CA TESTACEA. An oblong brick, employed by the Romans for making floorings (Vitruv. vii. 1. 5.); so termed because each one was arranged in such a manner as to imitate the setting of the grains in an ear of corn (spica), as shown by the example (Spica_testacea/1.1), from an ancient flooring in the Thermae of Titus. A pattern of this description was termed spicata testacea (Vitruv. vii. 1. 4. Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 62.), which answers to our expression herring-boned; for we, as well as the modern Italians, who call it a spina di pesce, deduce the resemblance from the set of the bones in a fish's back.

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  Spica testacea/1.1