AFRICAN DIAMONDS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5624, 28 February 1880, Page 3

AFRICAN DIAMONDS.

(FROM THE "I'OST.") If the neves which we published from our special London correspondent is correct, a discovery greater than even that of the Philosopher's Stone, so ardently sought for by the ancient alchemists, haa been made. The utmost extent of the 1 power claimed for the Philosopher's Stone was that it would transmute the baser metals into gold, but now a Glasgow chemist, we learn, claims to have succeeded in converting black, unsightly carbon into the most precious and beautiful of gems — the diamond. Chemists, of course, J have long known that diamonds were ■ simply carbon in a crystalised form, but : hitherto all attempts to solve the myßtery ' of how the crystallisation might be artificially effected have proved abortive. The experiments at Glasgow have, been proceeding for some time past. We learn from the Home papers that at ft meeting of the Glasgow Philosophical Society in December last, Mr James M'Tear, of the i St. Rollox works, stated that he had succeeded in obtaining pure crystaline forms of carbon which he had no doubt were diamonds. The results of his experiments had been so startling that he had shown them to Professor Tyndall, Professor Smyth, and others, who shared his opinion. The crystals, which were placed in the hands of Mr Maakelyne, of the British Museum, were said to possess all the refracting power of diamonds, and to resist acids, alkalies, and the intense heat of the blow-pipe. They also, we are told, scratched glass, and it only remained to be seen whether they would scratch diamonds or be scratched by them. Reading the cable message received in the light of this information, there seems every possibility that the manufacture of the diamond is now an accomplished fact. If so, the discovery will be one of the most useful made during what is emphatically the age of inventions. There are many manufactures — at present prosecuted with great difficulty, owing to the excessive dearness of diamond dust — which will now be carried on with ease and economy, and the result will be that the public will get a cheaper and better article. Of course, if the discover} 7 - turns out everything that is stated of it, the price of diamonds — which has steadily been on the decline of late years — will go down with a run, and many holders of what are at present rare and costly gems will never cease to lament the inquisitiveness of that keen-witted Glasgow chemist, which has wrung out on© of the greatest secrets in Nature's laboratory.