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Will you kindly bring this communication before the 
members of your Society at an early meeting, or in any 
other way you may consider most suitable. 
Professor W. C. Williamson, LL.D., F.R.S., brought 
before the Society the substance of a communication which 
he had received from James Nasmyth, Esq., of Penshurst. 
Experimenting upon the action upon glass of the coke used 
for heating the boilers of locomotives, Mr. Nasmyth found 
that a piece of hard coke “ possesses the diamond property 
of cutting a clean diamond-like cut into glass, not a mere 
scratch, but a true cut through it.” Mr. Nasmyth further 
points out that if this is done when the glass is held at a 
slight inclination to the direction of the sun-light showing 
through it, the cut thus made gleams with prismatic rays. 
These effects all correspond so closely with those produced 
when a diamond is similarly used, as to suggest that the 
coke bears some humble relationship with the diamond so 
far as glass-cutting is concerned. 
