on
the flat or largest side. The only account that could be obtained of it
was the statement that it was found in the possession of a poor man, a
native of Khorassan, and that it had been employed in his family for
the purpose of striking a light against a steel, and in this rough
service it had sustained injury by constant use. The diamond was
presented by the Prince of Persia to his father Futteh Ali Shah. The
Armenian jewellers of Teheran asked the sum of 20,000 tomaums (about
£10,000 sterling) for cutting it; but the Shah was not disposed to
incur the expense. These particulars had been forwarded to Dr. Beke by
his brother, Mr. W. G. Beke, late colonel of engineers in the Persian
service, and Khorassan campaign."
At the meeting of the British Association in 1852, Section B., Chemical Science, Professor Tennant, as reported in the Athenceum of
Sept. 25, 1852, expressed his opinion that Dr. Blake's view was
correct. " He had made models in fluor spar, and afterwards broken
them, and obtained specimens which would correspond in cleavage,
weight, and size with the ' Koh-i-Nur.' By this means he was enabled to
include the piece described by Dr. Blake, and probably the large
Russian diamond, as forming altogether but portions of one large
diamond. The diamond belongs to the tesselar crystalline system, it
yields readily to cleavage in four directions, parallel to the planes
of the regular octahedron. Two of the largest planes of the '
Koh-i-Nur,' when exhibited in the Crystal Palace, were cleavage planes;
one of them had not been polished. This proved the specimen to be not a
third of the weight
