Diamonds

When heated in air or oxygen to a temperature varying from 760° to 875° C., according to its hardness, the diamond burns with production of carbonic acid. It leaves an extremely...

The De Beers Consolidated Mines, Limited, was founded in 1888, mainly through the genius of the late Cecil John Rhodes, for the purpose of acquiring all-important diamond-mining...

The famous diamond mines in the neighbourhood are Kimberley, De Beers, Dutoitspan, Bultfontein, and Wesselton (Fig. 2). They are situated in latitude 28° 43´ South and longitude...

Sensational as is the story of the diamond industry in South Africa, quite another aspect fixes the attention of the chemist. The diamonds come out of the mines, but how did the...

The sorting room in the pulsator house is long, narrow, and well lighted (Fig. 9). Here the rich gravel is brought in wet, a sieveful at a time, and is dumped in a heap on table...

From the earliest times the diamond has fascinated mankind. It has been a perennial puzzle--one of the “riddles of the painful earth.” It is recorded in _Sprat’s History of the...

Speculations as to the probable origin of the diamond have been greatly forwarded by patient research, and particularly by improved means of obtaining high temperatures, an adva...

The black inclusions in some transparent diamonds consist of graphite. On crushing a clear diamond showing such spots and heating in oxygen to a temperature well below the point...

An hypothesis is of little value if it only elucidates half a problem. Let us see how far we can follow out the ferric hypothesis to explain the volcanic pipes. In the first pla...

Prodigious diamonds are not so uncommon as is generally supposed. Diamonds weighing over an ounce (151·5 carats) are not unfrequent at Kimberley. Some years ago, in one parcel o...

From the pulsator the diamonds are sent to the general office in Kimberley to be cleansed in a boiling mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids. A parcel of diamonds loses about ha...