Page:A treatise on diamonds and precious stones including their history Natural and commercial.djvu/42

 tions, great ingenuity is exercised, and often with success, so that an inferior stone obtains the price of a perfect brilliant. It rarely happens that the purchaser of a suite of jewels is acquainted with the circumstances incident to diamonds, and from this inexperience and want of sound judgment on the qualities of the article, he is obliged to rely implicitly on the good faith of the person with whom he deals.

may here be observed, that from the great value attached to diamonds, and from the universal desire of the opulent to possess them, various compositions have been manufactured in imitation of them. As these imitations, however, are unable to sustain a rivalry with the pure brilliant, manufacturers have succeeded better in endeavouring to form, with all the advantage of close setting, an imitation resembling bad, discolored, faulty diamonds, more especially rose diamonds;