came
there is not known, but it is probable that either the substances made
use of were not pure, or that some foreign body or bodies had found
their way into the matrass.
The
man who has most effectually disturbed the slumbers of the possessors
of diamonds, by agitating the question of their artificial
reproduction, is M. Despretz.
This
patient and persevering chemist organized a series of experiments
founded at first on the belief that the diamond was formed by igneous
means.
In
his first attempts, accordingly, he submitted carbon to the action of
the most intense heat that he could possibly command; having for this
purpose united and arrayed all the Bunsen piles that he could procure
at Paris, and so obtained a current of prodigious intensity.
The
carbon was immediately reduced to vapour, and was soon deposited in the
form of fine dust on the walls of the vessel in which it was contained.
M. Despretz would have it that the carbon had been volatilized; and no
one who attended his lectures at the Sorbonne can forget the profound
disdain with which he would exhibit the glass globe all blackened
interiorly, and exclaim, " And yet there are people who maintain that
carbon cannot be volatilized!" With all due respect for this eminent
opinion, it is probable that the carbon was not
