BURNING DIAMONDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 175, 23 October 1886, Page 7 (Supplement)

BURNING DIAMONDS.

In the year 1694, it was discovered by actual experiment, s*t Florence, that a diamond would burn. Cosmo 111 had one fixed in the focus of a burning glass? and, after some exposure to the rays of the sun, it cracked, coruscated, and finally disappeared like a ghost, leaving no trace behind. Another potentate, the Emperor Francis!., tried a number of yaluatile diamonds in the heat of a smelting furnace, and may have felt some gratification in finding they had disappeared. Thiß was in 1750, and about twenty years ater a magnificent diamond was burned in France. A jeweller named Le Blanc denied the possibility of burning diamonds and suspected some unfair play on the part of Macquer, the chemist who conducted the operation. He had often, he asserted, exposed diamonds to great heat, with the sole result of increasing their brilliancy. Then another jeweller, Maillard by name, who seems to have had a suspicion of the scientific truth, put three diamonds into .. an eathernbowl pipe packed in powdered charcoal, and exposed them without injury to intense heat. Lavosier, who was present, proved in 1776 that by shutting out the air the, diamond was preserved in a furnace, but that the admission of oxygen, with which the carbon combiner, allows the diamond to burn like piece of coal,