GEOLOGY. 295 



mcncement of the work was personally undertaken by the Duke of 

 Wellington, in the fellowing manner : The Koh-i-noor having been 

 embedded in lead, with the exception of one small salient angle 

 intended to be first submitted to the cutting operation, his Grace 

 placed the gem upon the soaife an horizontal wheel revolving with 

 almost incalculable velocity whereby the exposed angle was 

 removed by the friction, and the first facet of the new cutting was 

 effected. This, the first step in the operation, forms but a small item 

 of progress, as it is expected that the work, under the hands of the 

 two Dutch artists to whom it has been entrusted, will occupy a period 

 of some months, it being, as may be conceived, a work of great deli- 

 cacy, involving an equal amount of skill and care. The Koh-i-noor 

 is intended to be converted into an oval brilliant, and the two smaller 

 diamonds which accompany it, are to be similarly treated as pendants. 

 The present weight of the principal gem is 186 carats, and the pro- 

 cess now in course of progress will not, it is anticipated, diminish in 

 any material degree its weight, while it will largely increase its value, 

 anddevelope its beauty. Some conversation has occurred respecting the 

 doubts imputed to have been cast by Sir D. Brewster upon the iden- 

 tity xrf the Koh-i-noor ; but the general opinion amongst those best 

 acquainted with the subject appeared to be, that it was impossible for 

 Dhuleep Singh to have palmed off a fictitious diamond, when his con- 

 stantly wearing it on state occasions must have rendered it perfectly 

 familiar to thousands who would instantly have detected any attempt 

 at substitution. The more probable assumption was stated to be, that 

 the weight of the Mountain of Light had been more Orientale some- 

 what exaggerated. 



The business of cutting diamonds is now chiefly confined to 

 Amsterdam, and is thus described in a late number of the London 

 News : 



It was on a Sunday, in the early part of 1847, that, being at 

 Amsterdam, we wandered out from our hotel on a chance excursion 

 through the town. Before we had gone far the noise of machinery 

 arrested our attention, and, on making inquiries, we found that it pro- 

 ceeded from the celebrated diamond-cutting establishment of the 

 place. Let not the reader picture to himself a clean, neat, well-look- 

 ing establishment, such as one of our paper or cotton mills, but as an 

 old lumbering shed, in which, impelled by the labor of four or five 

 sorry horses, revolved a horizontal wheel. This was the only source 

 of motion by which the grinding machinery was kept at work ; and 

 its primitive nature in a century when the steam-engine is made to spin 

 cotton, grind corn, and weave cloth, could not but suggest to the 

 looker-on how remote from ordinary wealth wealth self-developing 

 and expansive was the conventional wealth represented by the 

 diamond trade. The operation of cutting is performed in several dilap- 

 idated rooms up stairs. There are seen in rapid revolution some 

 scores of horizontal metal wheels, each about a foot and a half in 

 diameter. Their surfaces being smeared from time to time with a 

 mixture of diamond dust and olive oil, and set in revolution, the dia- 

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