Gems Notes and Extracts Augusto Castellani, Mrs. John Brogden 1871

78 GEMS.a phlogistic material in a particular condition. Valmont-Bomarecalls it " the purest rock crystal."Boece de Boot, in 1609, suspected that the diamondwas an inflammable body.Boyle, in 1673, succeeded inburning it. Newton, in 1 704, having measured its refractingforce, and found it greater in proportion to itsdensity, compared with other gems, placed it immediatelyamongst combustibles.Averani and Targioni, in the Florentine Academy ofCimento, made some fineexperiments on the diamond,tending to prove Newton's opinion.The celebrated Lavoisier proved the truethe diamond, and declared it to be carbon.nature ofIn the year 1800 Clouet, Weller, and Hachette,placing in a crucible sixty partsof iron and one ofdiamond, and holding it to an intense fire, obtained apiece of most perfect steel ;which proved that thediamond combines chemically with iron, and thereforethat it is a carbon. In progress of time similar experimentswere many times repeated,and all demonstratedthat the diamond resolves itself in carbonic gas.Brewster believes it to be composed of vegetableelements. Arago holds it to be an hydrogenatedcarbon ; Davy finally has decided that it is an oxygenizedcarbon.It has never been precisely declared who firstdiscovered the diamond, and by what nation its valuewas first known and prized.It is said that the Etruscans, bymeans of theircommerce with the interior of Africa, knew it, and