May 1, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



699 



Good food is furnished at low rates and good 

 wages paid. Strict sanitary arrangements 

 are provided and maintained ; and the whole 

 of Sunday and the Saturday half-holiday, 

 save for a little indispensable work, are 

 granted regularly. It was found that with 

 three shifts of men each working eight hours 

 a day diamonds could be mined for less per 

 head than with a twelve-hour day at the same 

 rate of pay per day. No women may be em- 

 ployed in mine work, and no boys under 

 twelve. These broad and humane provisions 

 are an impressive object-lesson to employers 

 and corporations not so far away. 



The natural result is industry, contentment 

 and monumental success. Much very inter- 

 esting matter is given as to the ways and 

 usages of the different tribesmen. On Sun- 

 days there is considerable missionary work 

 done among them, and much visiting, games 

 and music among themselves; all are cheer- 

 ful and friendly, tribal enmities and feuds 

 being excluded from the ' compound.' The 

 native music is in itself a curious and fas- 

 cinating subject, but one that can not be 

 enlarged upon here. The De Beers com- 

 pounds, however, surely present a most in- 

 teresting field for study in many ways, alike 

 in ethnology and sociology. 



The succeeding chapter deals with ' The 

 Mining Towns,' and is an account of the 

 modern cities and suburban communities that 

 have grown up around the diamond mines. 

 Kimberley is described and illustrated, in its 

 various stages, from the camp of tents and 

 shanties of thirty-two years ago, through its 

 next phase of brick and corrugated iron, to 

 the up-to-date city of recent years, with its 

 hospitals, churches, club-houses, library and 

 school of mines, its gardens and water-works, 

 and its refined houses surrounded with foliage 

 and flowers. The tale is a wonderful one, 

 though paralleled by much in our own western 

 development, with the difference that in the 

 case of Kimberley there is ever present as the 

 leading factor the one great corporation, and 

 its master-spirit, Mr. Ehodes. 



Chapter XVI., on ' The Formation of the 

 Diamond,' is the one possessing the highest 

 interest in the book, from a scientific point 



of view. Both to the general reader and to 

 those who have followed the very active dis- 

 cussion among geologists through some years 

 past on this subject, Mr. Williams's full and 

 clear summary of the facts and theories as 

 to the whence and the how of this unique 

 store of precious gems, will possess great in.- 

 terest. It may cause surprise, however, and 

 disappointment to find that his closing word 

 is practically that we do not know ! He finds 

 in the several theories advanced many points 

 of striking suggestion and some of strong 

 probability, but nothing yet that fully meets 

 and explains the various facts encountered. 

 Some points are well established; others are 

 eliminated; others still are awaiting further 

 study. The ' necks ' are in some sense vol- 

 canic chimneys, but their filling has taken 

 place at no very high temperatures — more 

 after the manner of mud-volcanoes than of 

 true volcanoes ; the ' blue-ground ' is a breccia 

 of fragments, and not a decomposed lava; the 

 diamonds were not found in it, but carried 

 up with it from below. In these conclusions 

 Mr. Williams agrees more with the English 

 scientists, Bonney and Crookes. On the other 

 hand, he does not agree with Sir William 

 Crookes in attributing to the diamonds an 

 origin similar to the artificial diamonds of 

 Moissan, formed from carbon in melted iron 

 under enormous pressure and heat. Here Mr. 

 Williams gives some facts of his own, opposed 

 to Crookes' theory. The latter, arguing for 

 a crystallization at great depths from molten 

 iron, at very high temperature, had cited the 

 explosion, or violent rupture, of African dia- 

 monds, said to occur not infrequently, as an 

 evidence of the strain and pressure under 

 which they had been formed. Mr. Williams 

 states that this spontaneous breakage is ex- 

 ceedingly rare, and that in fact he had hardly 

 ever met with it. He then describes some 

 original experiments as to the presence of 

 iron or its oxides as the coloring matter of 

 the yellow and brown diamonds, which 

 Crookes had cited as an evidence of their 

 origin from fused iron far down in the earth's 

 crust. ' These experiments were made upon 

 a magnetic separating machine, the field mag- 

 nets of which attracted any mineral which 



