Ch. 1: Diamonds of India

Page of 143

Text size:



	DIAMONDS.	11

	diamonds were brought is not available, it would be useless to enter further here into any account of the geology of the neighbourhood of Simla. Mr. Griesbach, of the Geological Survey of India, has recently published some interesting remarks upon the correlation of the Vindhyan rocks of India with certain series occurring in South Africa, to one of which the sandstones of the Table Mountain belong. The possibility of the Cape diamonds, therefore, belonging to a period or horizon directly comparable to that which includes the Indian diamonds, offers itself as a subject worthy of future investigation. A comparison of the geology of Borneo with that of India may also prove productive of interesting results in this respect. But the incorrect conclusions of the earlier writers, drawn from imperfect data, which I have noticed above, as to the age of the diamond-bearing strata in India, afford a sufficient warning of the danger of premature attempts at correlation. Origin of the Diamond. The examination of the diamond-bearing strata of India has not resulted, so far as I know, in throwing any definite light on the yet unsettled question as to the conditions under which the crystallization of carbon took place, thus forming the precious gem which has occupied so important a position in history. Light regarding the subject seems to be destined to reach us, indeed, from another quarter, and it is to the synthetical operations of the laboratory, which, it is needless to point out, have made such great

Page of 143