“MONGREL” DIAMONDS

Shannon News, 17 August 1926, Page 4

“MONGREL” DIAMONDS

+ A ROMANCE IN COLOUR. In diamond diggers’ slang all coloured diamonds are “mongrel.” Old stagers on the fields would aver the rare red diamonds at Kimberley to be a "ruby-mongrel” or a hybrid gem, “cross.bred” between a diamond and a ruby. This strange idea (writes “A Mjnes Official” in the London Daily Chronicle) is not far from the truth. The “white” or pure diamond, although scintallating rainbow, hues, is a colourless, transparent crystal, with no taint of other mineral. But it is very rarely found. The vast majority of diamonds are smeared or smoked, as diggers put it, with yellow, brown, or grey; these stones and all the rare red, blue, green, and citron diamonds derive their colour from impurities locked inside the crystal. They are first cousins to rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and topaz, which derive their characteristic colours from similar mineral and organic .pigments diffus. ed through them. A dull yellow, brown or grey tint detracts from a diamond’s value; but when the impurities imprisoned in it import to it a definite red, green, or aquamarine “glow,” then the impure diamond Is more valuable than a pure gem many times its size. The new Kimberley red diamond, for instance, is expected to weigh only six carats when cut, yet to be worth £9OO, or £l5O a carat. But less than £22 a carat was the price fetched by a large white stone weighting 1495 carats found at Vaal River a few weeks ago. It sold ror £3150. Red diamonds are more rare than blue and blue rarer than green, amber and citron diamonds are valuable, but comparatively common. The most famous red diamond is the Ram’s Head, a rose.blush gem, dug from the Golconda mines in the Nila Hulla mountains of Hyderabad more than 200 years ago. It once formed part of the Russian crown jewels, and was valued at over £20,000, although a small stone. Diamond diggers look with much suspicion on “blue mongrels,” asserting that they “pinch the pipe,” or, in other words indicate that the seemingly rich “pipe” or bed of diamondiferous clay, will yield no more valuable stones after the discovery of a “blue.’ The biggest known green diamond weighs 485 carats, is rather paler than an emerald, and is now in the Dresden Musum, while splendid citron diamonds were among the Austrian crown jewsl. But, valuable as they arc, all diamond digger's bear a grudge against these “mongrel” diamonds. Every digger dally discards as worthless many bits of coloured quartz, and when a genuine “mongrel” is discovered the lucky finder becomes the .victim of the painful thought that he may have thrown away a score of others like it!