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Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 138, 21 June 1901, Page 4

In a fit of abstraction, John Davis, member of a firm of diamond merchants, while walking down Victoria street on a recent morniDg, pulled an old envelope out of his pocket and commenced to tear it up. When he reached the last section the terrible fact dawned on -him that it was the envelope in

which were some sixteen hundred small diamonds, valued at £IOO, and that he had been sowing these broadcast over a public thoroughfare. The news spread with light-ning-like rapidity. Shopkeepers looked up and came to the more lucrative occupation of picking up diamonds, while for a mile around an errand boy at his ordinary work was a phenomenon. Such a scraping of the street with knives and sticks had never been seen. As it happened, most of the lost stones went down the cellar grating of a jeweller’s shop. Ingenious youths fished for them with a piece of soap attached to a stick, and reeled in three prizes at a time. Others sat in the gutter sorting an anxiously guarded handful of dirt. Still the crowd grew. At one period over fifteen hundred lads were to be Ecen hard at work. From noon to seven o’clock the street was nearly blocked. When night fell candles, lamps and lanterns were brought to aid the indefatigable hunters for treasure trove, and the scene presented could only have been done justice to by Hogarth. About half the diamonds have found their way back to their rightful owner. Some were sold to a shopkeeper, and the rest, like the graves of a household, are scattered far and wide.—London Express. In Clyde there lives a man with a unique record. He is 60 years of age, has been 87 years in the county, once in a train, and once in a coach,