desirability
of careful search for diamond occurrences on the moraine line east of
Ohio—in I'ennsylvania and New York—as a further guide to locating the
original northern starting point. No similar discoveries have since
been made, except those in central Indiana, until recently a report has
appeared of one or perhaps two diamonds being found near Syracuse, N.
Y. An account of these and a discussion of the bearings of the whole
subject were given by Mr. Philip F. Schneider, of that city, in the
Syracuse Herald a of December 24, 1905. The topic
had been presented previously, by Mr. Schneider and others, at the
October meeting of the Onondaga Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately the
facts are not capable of positive proof at the present time. The owner
of the gravel-pit in the southern part of Syracuse claims to have found
a diamond therein several years ago and to have subsequently sold it
for $1,700 to a person living at Springfield, Mass. The purchaser has
since died, and his relatives are in Europe, so that it is not possible
at present to verify the account. The same owner also reports finding
another smaller diamond, which he still retains ; but Mr. Schneider
questions its reality, and suspects it to be only a quartz crystal. The
geological interest of such an occurrence and its inherent probability
in connection with the western diamonds of the drift make these
unverified reports worth recording.
In
Mr. Schneider's article he also treats of the possible relation of
these diamonds, if such they should prove to be, with the peridotite
dikes in and around Syracuse. It will be remembered that this rock,
altered to serpentine, was identified by the late Prof. H. Carvill
Lewis with the rock at Kimberley, South Africa, and with that in
Elliott County, Ky., all three being included under his name of
kimberlite.
This
close relationship to the South African diamond-bearing rock has led to
speculation and may lead to possible diamond production at the Kentucky
and the Syracuse localities, especially as both these latter have
yielded pyrope garnets similar to those freely obtained at Kimberley,
and there known as " Cape rubies." No diamonds, however, have been
definitely found as yet at either of the American kimberlite
occurrences; but if any should really be obtained near Syracuse, the
question may be raised whether they are derived from the drift or from
the kimberlite dikes of the vicinity.
CANADA.
Search for diamonds.—Dr.
H. M. Ami, of the geological survey of Canada, has given careful
instructions to a hundred or more parties that are surveying for the
Transcontinental Railroad, immediately north of the Great Lake region,
how to look for the diamonds in the hope of their locating the source
of the diamonds which have been found in the glacial deposits of
Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.
SOUTH AFRICA.
De Beers Consolidated mines.—The
most prominent feature in the seventeenth annual report of the De Beers
Consolidated mines, for the year ending June 30, 1905, laid before the
meeting of the shareholders at Kimberley, in November, is doubtless the
retirement of Mr. Gardner F. Williams from the office of general
manager, which position he has held and administered with signal
ability and
