He said archers were the elite athletes of the Tudor age, requiring great skill and strength to fire up to 12 arrows a minute, holding a heavy bow in one arm.
Then he discovered a new Japanese method of cutting diamonds: When viewed under a low-magnification (3x) lens, the stone refracted light in such a way as to give off a pattern of eight heart-shaped sparkles at the bottom of the diamond and eight arrow-shaped fire-bursts through the top--hence the name "hearts-and-arrows" diamonds.