Two types of diamond

Among a number of diamonds supplied to us by Professor W. T. Gordon, of King’s College, London, one, by a fortunate chance, was found to differ from the rest in its infra-red spectrum. Having confirmed by various methods th at a large absorption band at 8 g. present in the spectrum of all the other diamonds, was absent in this particular one, we explored photographically the ultra-violet spectrum of all the diamonds then available, and found th at the stone which was transparent at 8 p. in the infra-red was also transparent from about X 3000 to X 2250 in the ultra-violet, the other diamonds being opaque beyond X 3000. At this stage, between two and three hundred diamonds were examined visually by means of a simple ultra-violet spectroscope with fluorescent eye-piece without another diamond transparent beyond X 3000 being found. Among other physical and optical properties examined in comparison, little difference was found between diamonds of the usual and the transparent type : their waterwhiteness, density, refractive index, dielectric constant, Raman frequency and the earlier X-ray patterns appeared the same. A difference in the crystalline condition was, however, noted, for the transparent diamond was made up of a large number of parallel laminae, and it was also more nearly isotropic when examined by polarized light than the others.