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DIAMONDS.
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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
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