Page:A treatise on diamonds and precious stones including their history Natural and commercial.djvu/32

xvi The gem, without any essential color of its own, imbibes the strong solar ray, and reflects it with additional intensity, hardly yielding to the splendor of the meridian sun.

circumstance tending to enhance the value of the Diamond is, that although small stones are sufficiently abundant to be within the reach of a moderate expenditure, (and therefore affording to all persons who are in easy circumstances, an opportunity of acquiring a taste for Diamonds), yet those of larger size are, and ever have been, rare; and of the most celebrated for