RED DIAMONDS

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 60, 4 December 1926, Page 24

RED DIAMONDS

A red diamond weighing eighteen carats has lately been found on the Liehtenburg diamond fields in the Transvaal (says a mines official in the “Daily News"). Its lucky tinder can be quite sure that it will fetch a high price, for the last red diamond, found at the Kimberley alluvial diggings in April last, weighed only six carats, and vet was worth £9OO. Diamonds are found in all colours of the rainbow: blue, green, yellow • but red is the rarest hue of all The red diamond is a curious instance of fault being worth more than prefection, since the red hue of these rare and valuable stones is entirely due to impurities imprisoned inside the diamond crystal. Quite a small red diamond, part of the” Russian Crown jewels, has been valued at £15,000. The “Rain’s Head,” anothei famous red diamond, was won from the Golconda Mines, which ceased working two centuries ago. Two hundred pounds a grain has been given for a perfect rubv-red dia mond; but even £l5O a carat, the price of the last one found at Kimberley, proves, when compared with the £22 per carat realised by a large and almost perfect “white” diamond weighing carats, and found at Vaal River this year, bow great the value connoisseurs attach to the “impure” red hue given by the imprisoned mineral substances. Next to red diamonds in value rank stones with a blue tinge, of which the world’s largest and most perfect specimen is the well-known “Hope” diamond, notorious for the ill-luck which has dogged its wearers. It came from India in 1642, and is of a deep sapphire blue. Green diamonds are not so rare as blue or red. The biggest known green stone, which weighs -1-81 carats, and is rather paler than an emerald in colour, is in the Dresden Museum.