The Regent or Pitt diamond was found either in Borneo or India, and weighed then 410 carats. It was bought by Mr. Pitt, Governor of Madras, for £20,400, and was subsequently sold in 1717 to the Duc d’Orleans, Regent of France, for £80,000. In the process of cutting the diamond was reduced to 136-14/16 carats, and was amongst the French Crown Jewels stolen during the Revolution. Later it was recovered, and is still believed to be in France. The Hope diamond is a beautiful blue brilliant weighing 44-1/4 carats, and is one of those stones which is reputed to bring bad luck to its owner. It formed part of the collection of Mr. H. T. Hope, who bought it for £18,000, and after whom it is named. The stone was last heard of in the possession of an American, and quite recently the newspapers gave an account of a small child being killed in a street accident, the child being the only son of the owner of the Hope diamond. Pearls are not like diamonds or other hard stones, which, having gone through periods of thousands of years under enormous pressure deep down in the earth, can now last for thousands more with undiminished lustre set in a ring or a crown, exposed to the free air of this terrestrial globe. The pearl is really only a sort of disease, or perhaps to put it more mildly a distemper, or milder still a pastime, on the part of the pearl oyster. A large pearl naturally takes many years to form inside the oyster’s shell, whilst small ones take so many years less. Even in one or two years a foreign substance, say a small shot, will, if placed in a pearl oyster, become to all appearance a pearl of high price. Even minute effigies of elephants and Bhuddhas when introduced will, in the course of a few months, be thinly but completely coated with pearl lustre. The true and valuable pearl also had a nucleus, probably a grain of sand, and this year after year has been covered with thin coatings of pearl lustre, so that small or large it is practically solid, so solid that it cannot be broken if trodden upon. But even so it is merely the product of decades, and has not the lasting-power of diamonds, or rubies, or sapphires, or emeralds.