The gigantic Australian " diamond " has turned out a
common -crystal, as sober people ventured to expect. But why was it " sober " to disbelieve in its being a real diamond? Is it at all -more intrinsically improbable that you would find a diamond five times as big as the biggest known diamond, than that you would -find a diamond five times as small as the smallest known diamond ? Yet no one would call it sober to disbelieve in that. The probability of genuineness can't be in inverse proportion to the .value, but must depend in some way on the laws of crystallization of the substance of which it is composed. Surely it cannot be 'sober' to disbelieve an event which, if true, would be a vast source of gain only on that account, when it happens to be precisely as probable as another event utterly indifferent to you, and which no one thinks it sober to distrust.
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