The Osceola times., 1880-04-24
MR.. HANyAy'S DIAMONDS.
Genuine. But 1t Takes 1000 to Make
Salable stone.
London Standard.

salabIe stone.
London Standard.
The announcement that Mr.. Ballantine
Hannay, of Glasgow, would describe ms
process of producing diamonds atih-
ciallv, attracted an unusually large gath,
ering to the weekly meeting OF the Royal
Society last night Mr.. Hannay was not,
however, present, and the. papers were
read by one of the secretaries. The sec
ord paper, which occupied only few
minutes in reading, was preliminary
Note on the Artificial Formation OF Dla-
monds." by Mr.. Hannay. The author
mentioned that he had conceived that as
gases under great pressure and at high
temperature dissolved solids, which after
wards crystallized out on the heat and
pressure being removed, possibly water
pas--or gas passing from the liquid INTO
the gaseous condition-might act thus on
carbon, which might subsequently crys-
tallize in the form of diamonds. In this
expectation he was disappointed. All
forms of carbon, charcoal, lampblack,
graphite, etc, refused to dissolve under
the condition presented TO them; Ailcr
MANY failures he was recommended ny
Prof. Stokes to take advantage OF the OBJ
seryatlons of Messrs. Lieving and Dewr
on the affinity of hydrogen Tor certain
metals, and by this agency to dissoclate
the hydrogen from the carbon in the Va
rious HYDRO. carbons. lie claimed TO
have eventually succeeded by submitting
"a hydrocarbon" in the presence OF "a
nitrogenous compound" to immense
pressure and heat, with the result that
/ ,,,.,
which the experiments were performed,
minute crystals of diamonds, or in other
words, crystallized carbon, were found TO
have been deposited as the residuum.
The paper was criticised by several OF
the Fellows. No doubt was expressed
a. to the perfect good faith of Mr.. Han
nav. At the same time the attitude oi
the meeting was one of scientific skepu-
cism-taking the term in a perfectly in
offensive meaning-unhl further inior-
nation was afforded it, This Mr.. Han
nay promised to supply at an early date,
and to perform the experiments, If need
be, before the society or committee ap-
pointed byit. Meantime the great trou-
Bile he had was to find vessels in which
to make the experiment strong enough
to bear the prodigous pressure they are
subjected to. 1t also transpired that Mr.,
Hanney held out no hopes of his expert
ments ever being commercially valuable.
At present the cost of making about .
shillings' worth Of the meanest stones
exhibited being something like 50. /.
is, therefore, only rich people who can
afford the pastime of diamond making.
Prof. Story -Maskelyne expressed his
firm belief in the good faith of his cor
respondent. The stones satisfied every
test applicable to the native diamond,
and these tests having been repeated by
Prof. Roscoe, of Manchester, that gentle
man expressed an equally confident
opinion as to their being genuine dia-
monds. The main doubt as to their be-
ing genuine which still fingered about
Prof Maskelyne's mind was the fact that
the stones sent TO him were exceedingly
minute-none over the l2Sth of carat
in weight, and therefore all but micros-
copical. He could not see a single entire
crystal. All the fragments seemed as il
they were broken bits of larger dia.
monds, and one of the largest fragments
more especially bore this character. The
fact of their being broken Mr.. llannay
attributed to the mechanical violence
which they underwent on the heavy
iron tubes in which they were crystal
lized being broken to get them out.
Finally, Prof Maskelyne, though at pres
ent considering the discovery at best
merely of scientific interest, was not al
together certain that now that the prin-
ciple has been struck on, larger stones
might not eventually be produced. The
stones exhibited filled a glass tube not
much bigger than Il quill, and were 80
small that, as Prof Maskelyne remarked,
it would take about a thousand of them
to make up the bulk of the smallest
marketable diamond