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DIAMOND MINING 225
derers
in space and drawing them to her, anchors them forever from their
aeonic journeyings. These meteoric visitors upon examination, reveal to
us that in the farÂaway space which our imagination has peopled with
spirits and things ethereal, are the same solid elements common to us
here and subject to the same laws which govern ours. The white hot line
which came from other worlds to cross our sky, when we dig it from the
earth where it plunged to darkness, is found to be a mass of minerals
the same as ours, heated as ours would be if a similar lump of them
went hurtling through the air at 40 miles per second. Iron, the same as
ours; olivine and augite, the same as that of earthly origin, and in
some of these fragments of far-off worlds are crystals such as the
people of earth cut into gems with which to bedeck themselves. It may
be therefore that in other spheres there are creatures who also shine
resplendent with diamonds.
On
September 22, 1886, three of these meteorites fell near Novo Urei, a
small place on the right bank of the Alatyr, a river of the
Krasnoslobodsk district of the government of Penza, a remote part of
southeastern Russia. One of these on examination by scientists was
found to contain about 1 per cent, of diamantoid carbon in the form of
carbonado in small grayish grains.
Diamonds
in some form, usually as cubes of graphite, have since been found in a
number of other meteorites which have come to the earth in various
parts of the world. It is thought that these were originally diamond
crystals and were later changed to graphite, as they would change if
subjected to a high temperature without access of air. Such
diamondiferous meteorites have
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