["Topics of the Day", The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), Tuesday 19 April 1904, page 4]
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WONDERFUL WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PEARL.
Some curious gems and still more curious tales has Mr. Streeter, a veteran Bond-street (London) jeweller, who, on the eve of his retirement on account of failing eyesight, has been gossiping about his life-work to an interviewer. Mr. Streeter has been in the business for nearly half a century, and his family have been jewellers from generation to generation since the days of Henry VII. It has been said of Mr. Streeter that it was he who satisfied the world that there were diamonds in South Africa. He and the son of Henry Russell (author of "Cheer, boys, cheer") sent out an expedition under a man named Tobin. With two waggons Tobin trekked from Durban to what is now known as Kimberley, where he struck diamonds. He got out a few thousands of diamonds, and then, having got down to solid rock, sold the mine for £500 to the Kerr family. The latter cut the neck of the river, and got the water out of the way. and that very mine has since produced 300 millions of diamonds. No wonder Mr. Streeter says Tobin
was a fool! Prices of gems vary considerably at different periods. In 1847, when the Brazil Government could not pay its debts, it sent over to London such a quantity of rough diamonds that the price of melange dropped from £20 a carat to £4. One man who paid £12 for a two-carat
stone at this time sold it to Mr. Streeter in 1870 for £120, diamonds being at their highest market in that year, just before the Cape discovery. The fashionable stone today, according to the Bond-street jeweller, is not the diamond, but the emerald, though a colored stone "requires a few diamonds to show it up." Emeralds, rubies, and pearls are now all dearer than diamonds. When Mr. Streeter was a boy emeralds were £4 a carat; to-day a fine stone is worth £400. A 20-grain pearl has advanced in price from £80 to £600. Talking of curiosities in oyster-shells, the jeweller exhibited pearls in the shape of fishes, a dog's head, a perfect swan preening its feathers, a lady's shoe, a jockey's cap, and a large, well-shaped horseshoe. But still more curious was a shell from Western Australia, in which under the nacre was the distinct impression of a tiny lobster, half the size of a lady's fingernail. The expert volunteered a strange piece of natural history. "In every shell," he said, "we find either a very small crab or a lobster. We call them the slaves of the oyster. For some reason this little lobster gave offence to the oyster, which forthwith buried it by melting over it a pearl worth £500. Here is a shell pierced by a worm from the outside. As soon as the oyster found that the worm was likely to let the water in, he sealed up the road. What was the worm after? Why, the pearl inside the shell, which the oyster had power to roll about. What the worm wanted the pearl for I don't know."
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