24 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



and surmises as to its history weighs no more than 

 three-quarters of an ounce. This seems a small affair 

 by the side of the twenty-one ounces of the Cullinan. 



No one can guess what will happen to the Cullinan 

 in cutting it. At the best, it may be reduced to 

 something between four and five ounces in weight, and 

 it may "fly"" into fragments. It would be necessary 

 deliberately to cut it up into smaller stones in order to 

 obtain the full result of flashing of light and colour 

 which twenty-one ounces of diamond can produce. And 

 the operation of cutting and polishing is enormously 

 expensive. One would have hoped that Sir William 

 Crookes and other men of science would have been 

 asked to examine this wonderful mass of transparent 

 carbon by means of polarised light, Rontgen rays, and 

 radium, and to determine exactly its specific gravity 

 before it was broken up. Indeed, it would probably 

 have retained its greatest interest and value if never 

 cut at all. 



Glass or " paste," as it is called, is made which cannot 

 when new be distinguished from diamond by anyone but an 

 expert, armed with the necessary tests. And the same is 

 true as to paste imitations of all precious stones excepting 

 the emerald (whose beautiful green tint cannot be 

 exactly obtained), the catVeye, which has a peculiar 

 fibrous structure, and the opal. The real value and 

 quality of precious stones, as compared with glass, 

 depends on their durability, their hardness, their 

 resistance to scratching, and " dulling " of face and 

 edge. Even our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, as may be 

 seen in the fine collection recently dug up at Ipswich 

 by Miss Layard, and placed in the old house serving 

 as the municipal museum there, made gems of glass 

 and paste. In modern times the art of making artificial 

 " precious stones " has reached a degree of perfection 

 which, so far as decorative purposes are concerned, 

 leaves the natural stones no claim to superiority. 



