Sec. II, Ch. 10: The Coloured Diamond

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	Coloured Diamonds. 137

	Vienna and bought for a trifle by the late Mr. George Samuel, at that time Consul there, who sold it to the author for £200. Some years afterwards, it was sold for £300. Subsequently it passed into the possession of a jeweller in Bond Street, who sold it to an American for £600, and afterwards, it was sold for over ;£1,000 to a great New York jeweller, and I understand it has since been sold, for something like 7,000 or 8,ooo dollars. Among the treasures of the famous Grüne Gewölbe, or " Green Vaults," of Dresden, is a pale Green Diamond weighing 48-1/2 carats, and valued at £30,000. It is not, however, to be compared, in respect of colour, with the green one mentioned above, and is indeed more of the colour of an aquamarine. The collection of coloured Diamonds in the Vienna Museum, which was brought together by Herr Virgil von Helmreicher, a Tryolese by birth, but long resident in Brazil, is undoubtedly the most complete in Europe.



	*BLUE DIAMONDS.* Diamonds of a faint bluish tint are not unfrequently found, but their defect is that they are usually more or less opalescent, and therefore they formerly ranked as stones of inferior quality, though they now realize high prices in America. The only Blue Diamonds known until lately were found in the old Indian mines, probably those of Gani-Colour, visited by Tavernier, and the first mention we have of a Blue Diamond in Europe refers to a stone then considered unique. It weighed in the rough 112-1/4 carats, was bought by Tavernier in India in 1642, and was sold to Louis XIV. in 1668. It is described as " d'un beau violet." It would

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