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232
Gem Trader
late major of H.M. 19th Regiment of Foot, for dis­tinguished services during the advance of Kandy in that year, with a piece of jewellery in which, surrounded by rubies, was set a white spinel. On his return to London the gallant ex-Major offered the piece to Messrs. Rändle & Bridges, jewellers with an establishment near St. Paul's, but they would only buy the gold and the rubies. Ob­viously they either did not attribute any value to the white stone or were not prepared to pay the price the vendor set upon it.
However, they introduced him to a Mr. Lowrie, a professor and lecturer on mineralogy, who lived near Finsbury Square. He inspected and tested the stone, that latter by means of trying to scratch it with the hardest kind of topaz in his possession. But this made no impres­sion on the white stone, whereas the topaz itself sustained scratches. Thereupon Mr. Lowrie declared the hitherto unidentified stone to be a spinel of great value. This judgment was upheld by a number of experts in whose presence further tests were made. No doubt about it at all: the stone was a white spinel. Later on, however, an­other expert was to cast doubt upon this proof. In 1843 the stone, which weighed 285 grains or seventy-one and a quarter carats and was valued at ,£23,000, was offered to Louis Philippe, King of France, who was prepared to buy it after certification by his Court jeweller. But the deal fell through because this personage, so he stated, knew of no reliable tests that could be applied to a gem of this kind.
A spinel, by the way, is a form of magnesium aluminate.