Page:A treatise on diamonds and precious stones including their history Natural and commercial.djvu/34

xviii little liable to fluctuation, and has continued for several years gradually to increase in value; insomuch that the price of stones of good quality, if estimated by the rules in practice sixty years ago, would now, even in the depressed state of the market, be considerably too little

The properties and characters of the Diamond have occupied the attention of chemists, crystallographers, and minerallogists, from the time of Pliny to the present day: the most intelligent of our