Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/272

260 Every body possesses its own distinct crystalline form; every crystal is a geometrical figure, usually bounded by plane surfaces having angles of constant value, and the science of crystallography teaches us to distinguish substances by the measurement of these angles. It is invariably found that artificial crystals which have been deposited slowly and quietly surpass in size, regularity, and beauty those of more rapid formation; hence it is conjectured that natural minerals owe their great perfection to very gradual deposition in the rocks within which they are found.

Under different conditions the same substance sometimes assumes two crystalline forms, of which somewhat uncommon phenomenon carbon furnishes an example by crystallizing now into diamond, and now into graphite, or plumbago.

Although found in every quarter of the globe, the diamond is the rarest as it is the hardest known mineral. It occurs exclusively among gold-bearing rocks, or sands derived from gold-bearing rocks, and among strata which, though originally soft, shaly deposits of sand or mud, have been "metamorphosed," as it is called, into hard crystalline schists. It was once supposed by geologists that the metamorphic rocks were deposited in their existing crystalline form from a boiling ocean enveloping the still heated globe; but it is now known that these formations were originally deposited as mud or sand, and have been transmuted into schists by the influence of subterranean heat acting under great pressure, through lengthened periods of time, and aided by thermal water or steam permeating the porous rocks and giving rise to various chemical decompositions and new combinations within them. The diamond probably originates, like coal or mineral oil, from the gradual decomposition of vegetable or animal matter; we may therefore regard the brilliants which we prize in the drawing room as having been slowly elaborated from carbonaceous matter furnished by some dead fish, or rotting plant, originally buried in the mud of an inconceivably ancient palæozoic shore.

It will now be seen that, in order to produce the diamond artificially, some means must first be devised whereby the element carbon, which will dissolve in no liquid and vaporize in no flame, can be rendered soluble or gaseous, from either of which conditions it might then probably be recovered in a crystalline form, as happens in the case of other bodies.

Mr. Hannay's attempts to crystallize carbon originated from a research of a very different character. Water, as we all know, vaporizes at a heat of 212° Fahr., and in the same way every liquid has its "boiling-point," or temperature at which it ceases to be a fluid and becomes a gas. Little is known about the condition of matter immediately beyond the "critical point," as the moment of passage from the liquid to the gaseous state is called; and while investigating this subject it occurred to Mr. Hannay that some insight might be gained into a state