SUGAR DIAMONDS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5731, 28 October 1905, Page 10

SUGAR DIAMONDS.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, September Ist. The sleepy little town of Ashford, in Middlesex woke up tho other morning to find itself famous as tho home of a wonderful man who claims to be able to produce diamonds big as walnuts from sugar. Ho is a carpenter by trade, but bums tho midnight oil trying to worm out Nature’s secrets. He commenced, it seems, to try tho manufacture of diamonds on scientific principles many years ago, but finally broko away from the bonds of scientific data and proceeded to experiment upon quite original lines till one fine day ho discovered that to make diamonds from carbon extracted from sugar was pretty nearly as easy as falling off a fence. With tho aid of sugar—any variety will do, ho alleges—a blow lamp, and other inexpensive apparatus, he claims to have produced stones which will withstand tho action of hudrofluoric acid, are of adamant hardness, and will cut glass easy as winking. They are not tiny little specks of crystal, but stones of size, tho largest yet produced being, ho avers, tho size of a walnut. Ho is, in his own mind, quite certain that they are diamonds, having satisfactorily passed every test known, to him. ]Tis stones have, however, yet to be tested by experts. Meanwhile, Mr Moans —that is the carpenter-scientist's name •—is dreaming of the days to come when ho will take rank with the multi-mil-lionaires of the world. Ho is mentally spending tho fortune that is to to his in lavish philanthropy. Ho will devote tho profits of his sugar-diamond factory to uplifting iho down trodden, in assisting tho Government to build those great new arteries leading through and cut of London, and in abolishing the unemployed problem.

At present, however, Mr Hears is engaged in the prccauc if useful task of equipping quite a modest suburban villa with certain indispensable fixtures, and trying in his leisure moments to produce a crystal as big as an apple.