ing the stone to be a diamond.

It was then shown to the Clerk of the Peace, and finally it reached the
Colonial Secretary, and was sent to the Paris Exhibition, where it was
sold for five hundred pounds, and established the fact that diamonds
could be found in the Colony.

But it was some years yet before people in Cape Colony at all realised
the wealth of diamonds which lay scattered at their very feet. A Boer,
living at Dutoitspan, found a diamond sticking in the mud walls of which
his house was built, and in July, 1871, a man scratched the soil near
Colesberg Kopje with his knife, and unearthed a diamond. A town was
built round it, which has grown into the modern Kimberley.

So, from John O'Reilly's first diamond of five hundred pounds has grown
a great trade, which last year produced diamonds valued at over four
million pounds sterling.

There is little doubt that though Cape diamonds were 'discovered' first
in 1867, they were known in Africa long ago. Stone and bronze
instruments found beside skeletons in the Orange Free State show that
pre-historic miners had been at work, and on an old map of 1750 the
words, 'Here be diamonds' are written across what is now Griqualand
West.

SAD COMPANY IN THE NURSERY.

I found in a nursery corner,
A pocket-knife, pen, and a ball,
And this was the story they told me,
If I can remember it all.

'My beautiful handle was broken,'
The pocket-knife mournfully cried,
'When Alfred forced open the clock-face
To see if old Time was inside.'

'And look,' said the ball with a shudder,
'I'm scratched in a horrible way,
Because through the drawing-room window
He carelessly flung me to-day.'

'And worse,' cried the pen in a passion,
'Worse, worse than their troubles a lot!
I've been in disgrace, since he used me,
For making a terrible blot.'

And then they all cried in a chorus:
'In sorrow we're ending our days,
Because Master Alfred is careless,
And walks in such mischievous ways.'

THE JUMPING MOUSE.

New Jersey, in the United States of America, still has the name given it
when British explorers paid their first visit, but it does not look new
at present, and we can hardly believe that a few hundred years ago
savages roamed in its forests and woods. Many of its old trees have been
cut down, yet some remain to make a pleasant shade, and some curious
wild a