APPENDIX. 59 



The first TJral diamond was found at Bissersk in 1829, after 

 Humboldt's visit to Count Polier ; three others Avere found 

 afterwards in that year. In 1830 other three were found. M. 

 Karpoff, a mining officer, was shortly after deputed to carry on 

 the search, and four were discovered, which are described as 

 colourless, diaphanous, smooth, and very bright, with forty -two 

 triangular facets. One was broken in two. 



Thirty-seven others were taken, the last in July, 1833, from the 

 Adolphskoi Mine, and were used by the Countess Polier in deco- 

 ration of her church images. One weighed f of a carat. Their 

 forms showed from 12 to 42 curved facets, smooth and sparkling. 

 In 1831, however, a few were found in the gold land of M. Medjer, 

 near Ekatherinburg. One was given to the Institute of Mines 

 by his son, after the father's death. It was a rhombhoidal dode- 

 cahedron, with rounded edges and translucent, weighing f of a 

 carat. {Bull. Geol. Soc. cle France, IV, p. 100, 1833.) The 

 information here given was received from Count de Cancrine, 

 Eussian Minister of Finance. 



Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1841, saw forty diamonds from the 

 Adolphskoi rivulet ; but as the gold found with them did not pay, 

 no further search was made for diamonds. Three other localities 

 have also been named (" Oeol. of Russia and the Ural, 1845,"^. 

 641), in two of which one diamond and in the third two diamonds 

 were found. 



Sir Roderick considered that the Itacolumite of Brazil occurs 

 in various parts of the Ural, where it was detected by Colonel 

 Helmersen, and adds what seems to bear upon certain conjectures 

 previously mentioned. He says : — " We may add that as Carbon- 

 aceous grits of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods exist, 

 it is very easy to conceive how these masses, like other sediments 

 to which we have previously alluded, have been transmuted into 

 the quartzose micaceous schists which occur in the Chain, and 

 how the diamonds have been derived from them, and deposited in 

 the auriferous gravel." (p. 482.) 



Finally, I may remark that osm-iridium, found on the Cudge- 

 gong, occurs in three places near the Ural, as well as in South 

 America and in Canada, in gold diggings with which diamonds are, 

 as we have seen, generally associated. Moreover, cinnabar found 

 on the Cudgegong is also associated with the diamond detritus of 

 Brazil ; and as the mode of its occurrence is precisely that in 

 which it presents itself in the Grilbert Grold Field of North Queens- 

 land (as I learn from Mr. Daintree), and also in that most 

 wonderful Gold Field on the River Thames in New Zealand (as 

 Dr. Hector has stated), as well as in Otago, i.e., not in lodes but 

 as a member of drift deposits, there is a sort of union between 



