132 SOUTH AFRICA. 



Diamonds have been discovered and mined with 

 success in this Republic, but it does not appear 

 that any very marked results affecting the general 

 welfare have as yet occurred in consequence. 

 Indeed, the palmy days of diamond mining and 

 dealing are visibly on the wane. The market for 

 these indestructible gems has evidently been 

 glutted by the Kimberley output, and although 

 great skill has been employed to minimise the 

 natural, and eventually inevitable, effects of an 

 oversupply of such purely ornamental material, 

 prices have ominously declined of late, and stocks 

 in hand have accumulated to such an extent as to 

 threaten the necessity of selling at any price at 

 short date, or submitting to a ruinous retention 

 of dormant stock for an indefinite period. Un- 

 fortunately, diamonds do not wear out, and are 

 rarely lost, and the consequences of a glut of 

 mere ornamental gems are not difficult to foresee, 

 although likely to be lamentable enough to the 

 holders of stock, either in the shape of scrip or 

 stones, at no very distant date. In fact, the 

 prosperity of the diamond industry depends on the 

 maintenance of a very fragile artificial combination 

 of contingencies, not easily controllable even by 



