| Book Name |
Great (Famous) Diamonds |
| Author |
Streeter |
| published |
1882 |
|
|
Inexplicable admissions by Streeter because he had narrated precisely the facts about the two rulers in his book "Great
Diamonds of the World", published in 1882.After telling the story of his purchase of the Agra from Hertz, Streeter said he had had plenty of experience of gems and that his book on diamonds ("Great Diamonds of the World") was well known. When he wrote it there were not more than seventy
diamonds above 30 carats in the world. The rose-pink, the green or blue
diamonds were rare. The Agra was bought cheap at £15,000. When cross-examined about his so-called pedigree he said it had been written for him by a Colonel Birch, and Indian scholar, after the colonel had been to the Indian office and obtained the information.
Since the discovery of the South African diamond-fields, large
diamonds have become less rare; as we shall see later on, stones up to 150 carats in weight have been found there with comparative frequency, while not a few of several hundred carats have been met with. The largest undoubtedly genuine
diamond ever discovered, either here or elsewhere, was found at the Cape, in 1893, and weighed 971 3/4 carats. Probably the largest
crystal of diamond to be seen in a public collection is the diamond presented to the British Museum by Professor John Ruskin; this is a symmetrically developed octahedron weighing 129 2/3 carats. |
