3-070-503 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Professor Tennant, 1881. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. H. N. King of James Tennant, Professor of Mineralogy at King's College, and mineralogist to the Queen. '...he had frequently spoken of the probability of finding diamonds in South Africa, based on some similarity of its gravels with the gravels of Brazil. An accidental leaflet published for the use of his class, containing diagrams of the various crystalline forms of diamonds, which a pupil sent to his father, Dr. Atherton, of the Cape Colony, enabled that gentleman to verify as a diamond the first pebble picked up by a traveller in the Transvaal and which was suspected to be a diamond. The result of the verification was that the locality was explored, and twenty-three millions' value of diamonds have already reached Europe from those diamond-fields...When a friend suggested...the opportunity the Turners' Company offered for the advancement of turning, he saw at once the relation between the ornamental stone in which he dealt and the lathe. He further extended the encouragement of rewards to the lathe, in its use of cutting and polishing precious stones, and by his influence...gave the Turners' Company a governing authority over those branches of the turner's art'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.