1876.] 
355 
The Diamond in India . 
The late Nizam retained possession of them when he 
ceded the Northern Circars to the English Government. 
They are superficial excavations not more than 10 or 12 feet 
deep in any part. For some years past the working of them 
has been discontinued, and there is no tradition of their 
having ever produced very valuable stones.” 
Mr. Briggs’s report is full of errors. He must have 
known that the Pitt diamond — one of the finest and most 
perfect of its kind — was produced at Gani Partial, and 
that the Koh-i-nur came from the so-called “ Golconda 
mines.” Again, Partial — on the north bank of the 
Krishna, some 50 miles from the Bay of Bengal-— is only 
one of many diggings in the vast area which I have before 
indicated, some being still worked, and the others pre- 
maturely abandoned. 
The student will do well to consult the “ Geological 
Papers on Western India ” (Bombay, 1857), edited by my 
old friend Dr. Henry J. Carter. Here he will find detailed 
notices of a number of mines. John Malcolmson, F.R.S., 
treats of the diggings at “Chinon on the Pennar” and the 
Cuddapah mines. Of the latter Capt. Newbold says — -“The 
diamond is found in the gravel beds of the Cuddapah district 
below the Regur ”— -the black, tenacious, and fertile soils of 
Central and Southern India. The same scientific officer 
also describes the yield of Mullavelly (or Malavilly) north- 
west of Ellora, as occurring in a bed of gravel, composed 
chiefly of rolled pebbles of quartz, sandstone, chert, ferru- 
ginous jasper, conglomerate, sandstone and kankar, lying in 
a stratum of dark mould about a foot thick. Both these 
geologists inferred the identity of the sandstone of Central 
with that of Southern India from the existence of the 
diamond at Weiragad, a town about 80 miles south-east of 
the capital. Malcolmson declared that the “ celebrated 
diamond mines of Partel (Partial), Banaganpilly, and Panna, 
occurring in the great sandstone formations of Northern 
India, as well as the limestones and schists associated with 
them, exhibit the same characters from the latitude of 
Madras to the banks of the Ganges, and are broken up or 
(or Chicacole on the Coast), and Moortizanuggur or Gunton. The first four 
named were added to the French dominions by De Bussy. “These Circars,” 
we read, “ include territory extending along the coast from the mouths of the 
Kistna (Krishna) northward to near Ganjour, and stretching some distance 
inland.” Article No. n of the same treaty runs thus : — “ The Hon’ble E. I. 
Company, in consideration of the diamond mines, with the villages apper= 
taining thereto, having been always dependent on H. H. the Nizam’s Govern^ 
ment, do hereby agree that the same shall remain in possession now also.” 
2 K 2 
