CANTERBURY DIAMONDS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 602, 18 August 1883, Page 17

CANTERBURY DIAMONDS.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.) Christchurch, August 9. . At the Waste Lands Board meeting today, a large number oE applicants for prospecting licenses were disappointed, as they are postponed till Monday. The Chairman announced that holders of licenses to prospect forfeited them if they trafficked them ; that future licenses would be for only one hundred acres, aud that leases would be for sixty feet by sixty feet, except in case of prospectors, who would have ten times that quantity. The question whether holders of prospecting licenses are to be considered prapectors is to be decided on Monday. Ac a general meeting of shareholders cf the Pioneer Diamond Company, to-night, Kelsey’s last cable was read as follows : “ Great authority says received deceptive ; suggests immediate sinking for larger specimens, which forward to me reply; sharply; also when sent ” (sic). This is a continuation of the reply to a telegram from Christchurch, as follows :—“Most important you should telegraph immediately are stones diamonds definite. Use your code.” The first part of the reply being, “ Diamonds have been tested by competent authority, who declares fair proportion genuine ; cabling the result of the cutting on Friday, and the value,” it is taken to mean that though the diamonds are genuine, the cutting has reduced the size so much that the value could not be ascertained. It is thought Kelsey would not have gone to the expense of cabling, as he has done, a full message, not using the code, or recommended the expense of deeper sinking were the stones not diamonds.

Christchurch, August 13.

At the Waste Lands Board, 38 applications for prospecting licenses for diamonds were granted, and 57, who had entered names, did not appear. Mr Mark Herman, with 14 years’ experience in the diamond trade, who has been commissioned to buy diamonds, has inspected numbers of stones at Timaru, Ashburton, and Christchurch, and declares that there i 3 not a single diamond among them.