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ARTIFICIAL DIAMONDS. 
By F. W. RUDLER, F.G.S. 
W HY does Science smile approvingly on tlie modern chemist 
in his efforts to produce the diamond, and yet frown 
upon the old alchemical notion of producing gold ? If the one 
substance can he prepared by art, why not the other ? 
Everyone knows that these two bodies are the most highly 
valued of all natural products, and for that reason it was long 
suspected that some occult kinship must of necessity exist 
between them. Thus Pliny, speaking of the diamond, says, 
‘ It seemeth that it should grow nowhere hut in gold/ Much 
as the ancients prized gold, they prized this gem — the invin- 
cible adamas — still more. The earliest mention of the true 
diamond, according to the Rev. C. W. King, is by the poet 
Manilius, who describes it as pretiosior auro. i The Diamant/ 
says Pliny, to quote Dr. Holland’s quaint translation, * carrieth 
the greatest price, not only among precious stones, but also 
above all things else in the world : neither was it knowne for 
a long time what a Diamant was, unlesse it were by some kings 
and princes, and those but very few.’ But since those early 
days science has grown wondrously familiar with the diamond, 
and has even been bold enough to attempt its fabrication. The 
chemist has, in fact, outrun the alchemist : the one sought 
merely to make the precious metal, but the other seeks to make 
the yet more precious gem. Nevertheless, we treat the alchemist 
with ridicule, while we watch the diamond-making chemist with 
the keenest interest ! 
The truth is, that the value of the diamond, unlike the 
value of the gold, lies not in the matter of which it is com- 
posed, but only in the peculiar form in which that matter exists. 
In attempting the preparation of a diamond, we are not, there- 
fore, striving after the impossible ; we are not seeking either to 
create matter or to transmute one elementary species of matter 
