The famous novel by Mr. Wilkie Collins entitled “The Moonstone,” is based on the histories of “the magnificent stone which adorns the top of the Russian imperial sceptre, once the eye of an Indian Idol,” and the Koh-i-Noor. Some writers confuse this Moonstone with the well-known orthoclase feld-spar. The following extract from the Prologue of Mr. Collins’s book states: “The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set in the forehead of the four-handed Indian God who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represents it as feeling the influence of the Deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the Moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this day—the name of the Moonstone. A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome: not applying, however, as in India to a diamond devoted to the service of a god, but to a semi-transparent stone of the inferior order of gems supposed to be affected by the lunar influences—the Moon, in this latter case also, giving the name by which the stone is still known. The adventures of the Yellow Diamond began with the 11th century of the Christian era. At that date the Mohammedan conqueror Mahmoud of Ghizni crossed India: seized on the holy city of Somnauth and stripped of its treasures the famous temple ... the Moon God alone escaped the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans.... An age followed another until the first years of the 8th Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe, Emperor of the Moguls. At his command havoc and rapine were let loose.... The shrine of the four-handed God was polluted ... and the Moonstone was seized by an officer of rank in the army of Aurungzebe ... The warrior who had committed the sacrilege perished miserably. The Diamond fell into the possession of Tippo, Sultan of Seringapatam, who caused it to be placed as an ornament in the handle of his dagger—and after, General Baird himself found the dead body of Tippo under a heap of slain.” (See Koh-i-Noor, Regent, Orloff.) CHAPTER XVIII DICHROITE—IOLITE