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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



RECENT SCIENCE. 



By PRINCE KROPOTKIN. 

 II. 



AT one of the recent sittings of the French Academy of 

 Sciences, Henri Moissan, whose name has lately been promi- 

 nent in chemistry in connection with several important discov- 

 eries, read a communication to the effect that he had finally suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining in his laboratory minute crystals of dia- 

 monds.* His communication was followed by a paper by Friedel, 

 who has been working for some time past in the same direction, 

 and has attained similar though not yet quite definite results; 

 and, finally, Berthelot, who also was working in the same field, 

 but followed a different track, announced that, in view of the 

 excellent results obtained by Moissan, he abandons his own 

 researches and congratulates his colleague upon his remarkable 

 discovery. 



The discovery is not absolutely new, and the French chemist 

 himself mentions two of his English predecessors. Mr. Hannay 

 obtained in 1880 some diamondlike crystals by heating in an iron 

 tube, under high pressure, a mixture of paraffin oil with lamp- 

 black, bone oil, and some lithium ; f and in the same year Mr. Sid- 

 ney Marsden, by heating some silver with sugar charcoal, obtained 

 black carbon crystals with curved edges. J Besides, it was gen- 

 erally known that a black powder, composed of transparent micro- 

 scopical crystals having the hardness of diamond, is deposited on 

 the negative electrode when a weak galvanic current is passed 

 through liquid chloride of carbon. But these crystals, like those 

 of Mr. Marsden, belong to the easily obtained variety of black 

 diamonds known as carbonados ; while some of the crystals ob- 

 tained by Moissan are real colorless and crystallized diamonds — 

 the gem we all know and admire. 



For industry and every-day life the infinitesimal quantities of 

 diamond dust obtained by the French chemist may have no im- 

 mediate value, and some time will probably be required before a 

 modest-sized jewel is made in a laboratory. But the discovery 

 has a great scientific interest, inasmuch as it is the outcome of a 

 whole series of researches which have recently been made with 

 the view of artificially reproducing all sorts of minerals and 

 rocks, and which are admirably chosen for ultimately throwing 

 new light upon the intimate structure of physical bodies. 



* Comptes Rendus de l'Acaderuie des Sciences, February 6, 1893, tome cxvi, p. 218. 



f Proceedings of the Royal Society, xxx, 188; quoted by Moissan. 



% Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1880, ii, 20 (Moissan's quotation). 



