21 APRIL 1900, Page 2

The Czar has made an extraordinary gift, ostensibly to President

Loubet, really to the French nation. It is a map of France, 3 ft. square, formed of delicate varieties of polished Siberian jasper, each department being shown in a different colour. The whole is inlaid with jewels, "the towns of France, 106 in number, being marked in precious stones mounted in gold. Paris is represented by a diamond the size of a small hazel-nut, Havre by an emerald, Rotten by a sapphire, Rheims by a chrysolith, Lyons by a tourmaline (black emerald), Nantes by a beryl, Bordeaux by an aqua- marine, Marseilles by an emerald, Nice by a hyacinth, Cherbourg by an alexandrite (green in the daytime and reddish blue in the evening), and Toulon by a chrysoberyl. Twenty-one small towns are figured by amethysts, thirty-five by tourmalines, and thirty-eight by rock crystal. The names of towns, foreign countries, &c., are written in letters of solid gold, chiselled and let into the stone. Rivers are in platinum." The gift is said to have cost L160,000, but that is obviously a, blunder for 160,000, silver roubles, or £16,000, there being nothing in it, except perhaps the diamond, of any excessive value. It is a curious piece of barbaric magnificence not unbecoming the "master of two worlds," and has the merit of almost eternal durability. One wonders who will own it five hundred years hence, or whether, like the High Priest's breastplate, which was also of jewels, it will be altogether lost.