200 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
1874. This remarkable pearl, or more correctly group of pearls, was brought to 
London and exhibited in the Western Australian Courts of the Colonial and Indian 
Exhibition of the year 1886, the value there placed upon it by the company to 
whom it then belonged being no less than £10,000. The opportunity of its advent 
to London was utilised for a most critical examination at the hands of experts 
to discover whether or not this product was a genuine lusus nature, or the 
outcome of a more or less assisted artificial combination. The gem, however, 
withstood the severest tests applied, and it emerged from the ordeal with the 
added lustre of high scientific testimony as to its bond jides. 
A purchaser of the “Southern Cross” at the above price was not forth- 
coming, and it still remains in the hands of a Western Australian Syndicate, 
from whom it may yet be bought at a very material reduction upon the fancy 
sum originally placed upon it. While in Western Australia the author enjoyed 
the privilege of the possession of this wondrous Cross for two whole days and 
nights, in order that he might examine and immortalise it with his camera. The 
responsibility of sleeping with a gem under one’s pillow for the loss of which damages 
to the extent of £10,000 
might be claimed was 
Through an accidental fall 
since its original discovery, 
somewhat nerve - stirring, the two adherent pear! ele- 
and would not have been ments at the foot of the 
as lightly undertaken, and combination have become 
probably not as promptly slightly loosened from the 
conceded, in London as in preceding five, but the 
the as yet unsophisticated manner in which the whole 
capital of Western Aus- series fit into one another 
tralia. The author’s inves- by reciprocal convex and 
tigation of the “Southern concave surfaces, or, so to 
Cross” has led him in no say, shallow cup and ball 
way to dissent from the ver- articulations, leaves little 
99) casey 
THE “SOUTHERN CROSS”? PEARL, NATURAL SIZE. 
dict previously pronounced. or no room for scepticism. 
The Cross, in its entirety, consists of what may be defined as nine amalgamated 
pearls, seven of which constitute the main shaft, and the remaining two, disposed 
laterally and almost, but not quite, symmetrically on opposite sides of the second 
pearl in the central row, represent the arms. The superficial likeness in size and 
contour of the central shaft, regarded separately, to a row of plump, closely-adpressed 
