MEASURES.Grain and Dry Measure are the olluck, measure, marcal, parah, and garce, thus divided: 1 Olluck...... equal to ........................................................ Cub. In. ......1 Measure, or Puddy ...... Marcal ........... 11.719 93.752 750 ......1 Parah of Chunam... 3,750 ......1 Garce..................300,000 The marcal and lesser measures were ordered, when made of wood, to be round, and rimmed with iron or brass, and the marcal tobbe 3 9 inches deep, and 10 2 oz. and 2 drs. avoirdupois, equal to 15 English bushels. 61 feet deep. inches diameter inside, and to hold 27 lbs. of fresh well-water: hence, 43 marcals are The parah to measure 2 feet square, and When grain is sold by weight, 9,2561 lbs. equal to 18 candies, 12÷maunds, are a garce, which is nearly 17 English quarters. iLIQUID MEASURE. The puddy, by which milk, ghee, oil, and some other liquids are sold, is equal to the puddy in grain measure, containing 8 ollucks; but for wine, spirits, &c. the English measure is used. salt mulig Öllucks...... are equal to ......1 Measure, or Puddy 8 bmoż to kg Measures.... ** como 16 L.120 Marcals.....diksi ......1 Marcal LAND MEASURE.-Land is generally measured with a Gunter's chain of 100 links, or with a rod of 10 feet, and reduced to cawnies, grounds, and 60 feet long, and 40 feet broad, make 1 ground, or mauney, equal to 2,400dw square feet. -24 grounds, or maunies, make 1 cawney, equal to 57,600 square feet. The Indian cawney is in proportion to the English acre, as 1 is to 1.3223, or as 121 is to160. To reduce Indian cawnies to English acres, multiply the given number of cawnies by 160, and divide by 121; the quotient will be the number of acres, and the remainder the fractional part of an acre. Or multiply the cawnies by 1.3223, and the product, cutting off four places to the right hand, will be the same, and the figures so cut off are the decimal parts of an acre. In the Jaghire, the ady, or Malabar foot, is used, which is 10.46 inches English; 24 adies make 1 culy; and 100 square culies make 1 cawney, or nearly an English acre. The common culy, however, is 26 adies, or 22} English feet, which makes the cawney 1 acre, 284 perches. The proper cawney would only contain 43.778 square feet. LONG MEASURE. The covid in cloth measure is 18 inches; but the English yard is generally used. ARTICLES PROCURABLE AT MADRAS, WITH DIRECTIONS. DIAMOND. This gem is the hardest, most beautiful, transparent, and brilliant of all the precious stones. Diamonds are found only in the East Indies and in Brazil, and are distinguished by jewellers into oriental and occidental; the finest and hardest being always termed oriental. When in their rough state, they are either in the form of roundish pebbles, with shining surfaces, or of octohedral crystals; but though generally in the latter form, their crystals are often irregular; they are lamellated, consisting of very thin plates, like those of talc, but very closely united, the direction of which must be ascertained by the lapidaries before they can work them properly. They are usually covered with a thin crust, which renders them semi-transparent; but when this is removed, they are transparent. The principal diamond mines in India are that of Raolconda in the Carnatic; that of Gani, or Coulour, also in the Carnatic; that of Somelpour, or Goual, in Bengal; and that of Succadana, in the Island of Borneo. These gems are generally imported from Madras in their rough state, in small parcels called bulses, neatly secured in muslin, sealed by the merchant, and are generally sold in Europe by the invoice, that is, are bought before they are opened, it being always found they contain the value for which they were sold in India, and the purchaser gives the importer such an advance on the invoice as the state of the market warrants, The bulses contain stones of various shapes and sizes. The chief things to be observed in purchasing rough diamonds are, 1st. The colour. 2d. The cleanness. 3d. The shape. 1. Colour should be perfectly crystalline, resembling a drop of clear spring water, in the middle of which you will perceive a strong light playing with a great deal of spirit. If the coat be smooth and bright, with a little tincture of green in it, it is not the worse, and seldom proves bad; but if there is a mixture of yellow with green, then beware of it-it is a soft greasy stone, and will prove bad. If the stone has à rough coat, that you can hardly see through it, and the coat be white, and look as if it were rough by art, and clear of flaws or veins, and no blemish cast in the body of the stone, (which may be discovered by holding it against the light), the stone will prove good... It often happens that a stone appears of a reddish hue, on the outward coat, not unlike the colour of rusty iron; yet by looking through it against the light, you observe the heart of the stone to be white, (and if there be any black spots, or flaws, or veins in it, they may be discovered by a true eye, although the coat of the stone be opaque), and such stones are generally good and clear. If a diamond appears of a greenish bright coat, resembling a piece of green glass, inclining to black, it generally proves hard, and seldom bad; such stones have been known to have been of the first water, and seldom worse than the second; but if any tincture of yellow seem to be mixed with it, depend upon its being a very bad stone. All stones of a milky coat, whether the coat be bright or dull, if never so little inclining to a blueish cast, are naturally soft, and in danger of being flawed in the cutting; and though they should have the good fortune to escape, yet they will prove dead and milky, and turn to no account. All diamonds of cinnamon colour are dubious; but if of a bright coat, mixed with a little green, then they are certainly bad, and are accounted amongst the worst of colours. 18 You will meet with a great many diamonds of a rough cinnamoncoloured coat, opaque: this sort is generally very hard, and when cut, contains a great deal of life and spirit; but the colour is very uncertain; it is sometimes white, sometimes brown, and sometimes a very fine yellow. II. Cleanness.-Concerning the fouls and other imperfections that take from the value of the diamond, it is said, that all diaphanous stones are originally fluids, and spirituous distillations falling into proper cells of the earth, where they lie till they are ripened, and receive the hardness we generally find them of. Every drop forms an entire stone, contained in its proper bed, without coats. While this petrific juice, or the matter which grows in the stone, is in its original tender nature, it is liable to all the accidents we find in it, and by which it is so often damaged; for if some little particle of sand or earth fall into the tender matter, it is locked up in it, and becomes a foul, black spot; and as this is bigger or less, so it diminishes the value of the stone. This, at least, is the mode in which fouls are accounted for. 1 Flaws are supposed to be occasioned by some accident, shake, or violence which the stone received whilst in its bed, or in digging it out, and this frequently occasions an open crack in the stone, sometimes from the outside to the centre, and sometimes in the body of the stone, which does not extend to the outside; but this is much the worst, and will require great judgment to know how far it does extend. It takes half from the value. Holes are formed on the outside of the rough diamond, and must be occasioned by some hard particle of sand falling into the tender substance of the stones, which not being heavy enough to sink into the middle, remains on the outside thereof, like a black spot, and being picked off, leaves a round hole. The next and greatest difficulty will be to avoid beamy stones, and this requires more skill and practice than any thing yet spoken of; yet time and opportunity will enable you to discover them. Indeed a great many stones are a little beamy in the roundest (by which is meant the edges); but it is not so very material, though it diminishes the life of the diamond. By beamy stones, are meant such as look fair to the eye, and yet are so full of veins to the centre, that no art or labour can polish them. These veins run through several parts of the stone, and sometimes through all; and when they appear on the outside, they shew themselves like protuberant excrescences, from whence run innumerable small veins, obliquely crossing one another, and shooting into the body of the stone. The stone itself will have a bright and shining coat, and the veins will look like very small pieces of polished steel rising upon the surface of the stone. This sort of stone will bear no polishing, and is scarcely worth a rupee per mangelin. Sometimes the knot of the veins will be in the centre; the fibres will shoot outward, and the small ends terminate in the coat of the diamond. This is more difficult to discover, and must be examined by a nice eye; yet you may be able here and there to observe a small protuberance, like the point of a needle lifting up a part of the coat of the stone: and though by a great deal of labour it should be polished, it will be a great charge, and scarcely pay for the cutting, and therefore it is to be esteemed as little better than the former. But if you are not very careful, they will throw one of these stones into a parcel, and oftentimes the largest. III. Shape. There are stones in four points, stones in two points, and flat stones. Stones in four points consist in four equilateral triangles at top, and the same at bottom, being a perfect steragon: this is the most complete shape, and makes the best brilliants, and when sawed in four points, the best rose diamonds, which are esteemed more than others, whether shaped thus, or rough. Stones in two points are when four of the triangular planes are broader than the other four. This will make a thinner brilliant, lose more in the cutting, and will not retain so much life. For roses, it must be sawed through two points, and it will make fine roses, but not so lively as the former. Stones in the flat, are when the points are so depressed and confined, that you only see the traces where Nature would have polished them, had they not been confined; and therefore they are irregular and distorted. In cutting these stones, they do not regard the points, but make the flat way either roses or brilliants. These stones may be split rough in these shapes; they lose more in cutting than the others. All Indian-cut stones are called lasks: they are in general ill-shaped, or irregular in their form; their substance or depth is ill-proportioned; some have more of the stone's substance at top than at bottom; the table, or face, is seldom in the centre of the stone; sometimes it is of an extravagant breadth, and sometimes too small, and none of them are properly polished. The chief thing regarded is, that of saving the size and weight of the stones. These stones are always new wrought when brought to Europe. Such as have the least stain, speck, flaw, or appearance of veins, should be rejected. For the valuation of diamonds of all weights, Mr. Jefferies lays down the following rule. He first supposes the value of the rough diamond to be settled at £2 per carat at a medium; then to find the value of diamonds of greater weights, multiply the square of their weight by two, and the product is the value required. For instance, to find the value of a rough diamond of two carats, 2×2-4, the square of the weight, which multiplied by two, gives £8, the value of a rough diamond of two carats. For finding the value of manufactured diamonds, he supposes half their weight to be lost in manufacturing them; and therefore to find their value, multiply the square of double their weight by two, which will give their true value in |