358 ANNUAL REPORT SIVnTHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 196 



however, has not always played the part of the peacemaker. You 

 may recall Becky Sharp's diamonds. The wicked Lord Steyn gave 

 them to her and she kept them hidden from her husband Rawdon 

 Crawley, and only wore them when she secretly entertamed her 

 wealthy benefactor. One night Rawdon came home unexpectedly 

 and found Becky hung with trinkets and singing to Lord Steyn. lie 

 was so angered that he tore the diamonds from her and ground them 

 beneath his heel and left home forever. Then there is the delightful 

 scene of the servant creeping into the room afterwards, picking up 

 the diamonds and running away with them, broken as they were. 



Another story that springs to mind is the one which Dumas tells 

 in his novel "The Queen's Necklace," This extraordinaiy affair took 

 place at the French Court in the tune of Louis XV and involved the 

 King, Madame du Barry, the Prince Cardinal de Rohan, and Marie 

 Antoinette. A magnificent diamond necklace was made by the court 

 jeweler in the hope that it would be bought by Louis XV. His death 

 in 1774 left the jeweler without a purchaser until an adventuress 

 "Countess" Lamotte and her partner the notorious trickster, Caglios- 

 tro, managed to dupe the Cardinal into buying the necklace on behalf 

 of the Queen, All was eventually discovered, but not before the 

 necklace had been broken up and sold piecemeal and the scandal had 

 aroused popular feeling against Marie Antoinette who was entirely 

 blameless, and in fact, ignorant of it all. The populace of Paris, in 

 that state of excitement and rage which terminated in the Reign of 

 Terror, could not be convinced of this, and even at the last, the mob 

 that surromided the tumbril that bore the unfortmiate queen to the 

 guillotine, cast slurs upon her on account of this diamond necklace 

 affair. 



Almost as fantastic as stories which have been written about dia- 

 monds are the accounts of attempts which have been made to manu- 

 facture diamonds artificially. Until fairly recently there is no evi- 

 dence to show that any of the claimants to success were any more 

 than optimists or charlatans. But 3 or 4 years ago the General Elec- 

 tric Co. in America did manage to achieve the enormous temperatures 

 and pressures which are needed to produce diamonds in the laboratory, 

 and now have an output of 3I/2 million carats per annum of industrial 

 diamond grit. When it is remembered tliat the South African export 

 market for this class of diamond is 11 million carats per annum, it 

 will be appreciated that the scale of production of the artificial stones 

 is by no means a negligible one. In some applications these artificial 

 diamonds are superior to the natural ones, in other cases they are not. 



Prior to this very remarkable achievement on the part of scientists 

 at the General Electric Co., we relied upon geologists and prospectors 

 and miners to meet the demand for these precious stones. Diamonds 



