222 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



finally disposing of the question as to their possible organic origin, 

 but merel}'' giving some specimens which might hereafter be 

 turned to account. These specimens consisted of faithful repre- 

 sentations of several inclosures contained in various diamonds of 

 my collection, which not only bore resemblance to rounded and 

 parenchymatose phxnt-cells, but might, not improperly, be com- 

 pared to algas and fungi. Although well acquainted with the 

 more frequent formations produced in diamonds by bubbles, 

 cracks, and flaws, and consequently thoroughly aware of the dif- 

 ference, still I have not yet ventured to declare these other for- 

 mations to be of orofanic origin, or even to designate them bv a 

 systematic name, but contented myself with calling the attention 

 of investigators to them. They merit such attention all the more, 

 since, very recently, the so-called primitive clay slates, even 

 gneiss, which accompany diamonds, have, through the discovery 

 of organic remains (I need only call to mind the Eozoon Canadense 

 in the lower gneiss of Murchison), been drawn more and more 

 into the group of palseontological strata. Delesse, in an interest- 

 ing article on the occurrence of nitrogen and organic compositions 

 in the earth's crust, published in the journal of the German Geo- 

 logical Society in 1860 (Vol. xii., p. 429), has discovered the like 

 in a great number of minerals, as in quartz, fluor-spar, emerald, 

 the loadstone, calc-spar, also in granite, porphyry, diorite, mela- 

 phyr, serpentine, trap, basalt, hornblende slate and itacolumite, 

 the supposed matrix of the diamond. The supposed, I say, since 

 Tschudi has recently and correctly drawn in question its natural 

 occurrence in itacolumite, and even declared its flexibility, that 

 much-admired property of this remarkable stone, to be not origi- 

 nal, but imparted to it by heat. Gustav Bischof (' Text-book of 

 Physical and Chemical Geology ') pronounces himself in favor of 

 the aqueous origin of the diamond. Prolonged investigations 

 have recently led me to examine a rhomboidal diamond, in which 

 I observed for the first time (what bears especially upon the ques- 

 tion of aqueous origin) dendrites formed of extremely delicate 

 blackish grains, just as they frequently occur in chalcedony, jas- 

 per, and other minerals formed by watery process. Of still 

 greater importance are two diamond crystals with green-colored 

 inclosures, w^hich I discovered in the Royal Mineralogical Cabinet 

 in Berlin, and which were submitted to my examination in the 

 most generous manner by Prof. Rose. The first one, weighing 

 263 milligr., contains a great number of accurately round grains 

 of a uniform green, and scarcely compressed ; even in those pla- 

 ces where they lie close together, they do not run into one another, 

 nor flatten one another, but preserve their rotundity. This invol- 

 untarily reminds us of an alga, a Palmellacea, like the Protococcus 

 pluvialis, which indeed it resembles exactly. The second crystal, 

 345 millgr. in weight, displays a similar alga-shape of a like 

 green color; the grains are not so round, but rather drawn out, 

 often hanging to one another like the links of a chain, often occur- 

 ring singly or in pairs. These last appear then joined originally 

 to one another by a bridge-like prolongation, then subsequently 

 united into some larger body ; these forms, resembling the struc- 



