Ch. 7: Diamonds in Other Areas

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	THE BOOK OF DIAMONDS comes from Arizona where ten tons of this iron have been collected, and specimens of the Canyon Diablo meteorites are in most collectors' cabinets. An ardent mineralogist—Dr. Foote—cutting a section of this meteorite, found the tools were injured by something vastly harder than metallic iron. He examined the specimen chemically, and soon found the Canyon Diablo meteorite to contain black and transparent diamonds. This discovery was afterwards verified by Professors Moissan and Friedel. But it is also certain from the evidence offered by the Arizona and other meteorites, that similar conditions have existed among many bodies in space, and that on more than one occasion a meteorite freighted with jewels has fallen as a star from the sky. Meteorites were used at McPherson College as a solvent for sugar carbon to make synthetic diamonds. Some microscopic diamonds were made this way, but never any as large as with natural wrought iron. I have found some spinels in meteorites. Spinels are found in meteorites more frequently than diamonds. In the earth and air; in things animate and things inanimate; in the vegetation of the earth and the bodies of the animals; in the charcoal pit and the breath we constantly exhale, is that of which diamond is only a form known as carbon; for example, substances like sugar and starch contain carbon which is the same element as a pure diamond.

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