RED DIAMONDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19964, 4 December 1926, Page 7

RED DIAMONDS.

most valuable of jewels. A reel diamond weighin'? 18 carats has lately been found on the Lichtcnburg diamond fields in the Transvaal. Its lucky finder can bo quite sure that it will fetch a high price, for the last red diamond, found at the Kimberley alluvial diggings in April last, weighed only six carats, and yet was worth £OOO (states a writer in the London Daily News). Diamonds are found in all colours ol the rainbow —blue, green, yellow—but red is the rarest hue of all. The red diamond is a curious instance ot fault being worth more than the perfection, since the red hue of these rare and valuable stones is entirely due to impurities imprisoned inside the diamond crystal. Quito a small red diamond, part of the Russian Crown jewels, has been valued at £15,000. The “Ram’s Head,” another famous red diamond, was won from the Golconda Mines, which ceased working two centuries ago. Two hundred pounds a grain has been given for a perfect ruby-red diamond; but even £l5O a carat, the price of the last one found at Kimberley, proves, when compared with the £22 per carat realised by a large and almost perfect “white” diamond weighing 1401 carats, and found at Vaal River this year, how great the value connoisseurs attached to the “impure” red hue given by the imprisoned mineral substances. Next to rod diamonds in value rank stones v ith a blue tinge, of Which the world’s largest and most perfect specimen is the well-known “Hope” diamond, notorious for the ill-luck which has dogged its wearers. It came from India in 1042, and is of a deep sapphire blue. Green diamonds arc not so rare as blue or red. The biggest known green stone, which wei'd" 4SI carats, and is rather paler than an emerald in colour, is in the Dresden Museum.