Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1880-04-15

which might subsequently crystalline in
the form of diamonds. In this expecta-.
ton he was disappointed. All forms OF
carbon, charcoal, lamp black, graphite,
etc., refused to dissolve under the con-
dition presented to them. After many
failures he was recommended by Prof.
Stokes to take advantage of the obser-
vations of Messrs. Lieving and Dewar
on the affinity of hydrogen for certain
metals, and by this agency to associate
the hydrogen from the carbon in the
various hydrocarbons. He claimed to
have eventually succeeded by submit
ting I" q hydro-carbon" in the presence
of "a heterogeneous compound" to i'm
mense pressure and heat, with the re-
suit that on breaking open the iron
tubes in 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 fellows. No doubt was ex-
pressed as to the perfect good faith OF
Mr.. Hannay. At the same time the at
titude of the meeting was one of scien-
tific kepticism-taking the term in q
perfectly inoffensive meaning-until
further information was afforded it.
This Mr.. Hannay promised to supply
at an early date, and to perform the
experiments if need be before the
society or a committee appointed by
it. Meantime. the great trouble he
had was to find vessels in which to
make the experiment strong enough to
bear the prodigious pressure they were
subjected to. 1t also TRANSFERRED that
Mr.. Hannay held out no hopes of his
experiments ever being commercially
valuable; at present the cost of making
about five shillings' worth of the mean
est stones exhibited being something
like five pounds. 1t is, therefore, only
rich people who can afford the pas
time of Misunderstanding. Prof. Story
Maskelyne expressed his firm belief
in the good faith of his correspondent.
The stones satisfied every test appli-
cable 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
being genuine which fingered about
Prof. Maskelyne's mind was the fact
that the stones sent him were exceed
luuutC-uOuC ONCI tuC OuO huH-
dred and twenty-eighth of carat in
weight, and therefore all but micro
scopical. He could not see single en-
tire crystal. All the fragments seemed
as if they were broken bits of larger
diamonds, and one of the largest frag-
ments more especially bore this charac-
ter. The fact of their being broken
Mr.. Hannay attributed to the mechan-
ical violence which they underwent on
the heavy iron tubes in which they
were crystalized being broken to get
them out. Finally, Prof. Maskelyne,
though at present considering the dis
covery at best merely of scientific in
terest, was not altogether certain that,
now that the principle has been struck
on, larger stones might not eventually
be produced. The stones exhibited
filed a glass tube not much bigger than
a quill, and were so small that, as
Prof. Maskelyne remarked, it would
take about thousand of them to make
up the bulk of the smallest marketable
Standard.