Burning the Diamond.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 188, 22 January 1887, Page 5

Burning the Diamond.

The ancients were as sure no diamond could be .burned as they were that none could be broken. Adamae, the indomitable, yielded neither to fire nor force. It was not till 1609 that De Boot suspected its inflammability, nor till 1673 that it waB actually burned. In 1694 Avenrani and Targioni of Cimento, at the instigation of Cosmo 111, the Grand Duke of Florence, burned the diamond In the focus of concentrated sun rays, where it was seen to crack, coruscate, and finally disappear. They had tried to learn the secret of its composition, and, like a true martyr, it had perished confessing ; it had burned itself out like a sun. Forty-four years after the death of Newton (who guessed the diamond to be some " unctuous body coagulated," pernaps the vegetable secretion of the banyan tree, better to shake than the Pagoda), a magnificent diamond was burned, on July 26, 1771, in the laboratory of M. Macquer, and in the pre sell we, among others, of a well-known jeweller, M. Le Blanc, who, notwithstanding what he had seen, stood forward and declared the diamond indestructible in the furnace, for that he had often subjected stones of his own to intenso heat to rid them of blemishes, and that they had never sufferod the slightest injury in the process. Thereupon the two chemisce, d'Arcet and Rouelle, demanded the experiment should be made , before them on the spot. Rapit in jus ; clamor utrinque, undique, concursus; with the result that poor Le Blanc, like the savant de village, found himself, af tor three hours' trial in the crucible, at the temperature that melts silver, minus one of the most precious of his stock in trade.