Such a stone is so valuable that
$15,000 has been spent in grinding and polishing its surface. The
glazier pays $5.00 for a bit of carbon so small that it would take
about ten thousand of them to make an ounce.
Why is there such a difference in value? Simply arrangement and
compactness. Can we so enormously enhance the value of a bushel of
charcoal by arrangement and compression? Not very satisfactorily as
yet. We can apply almost limitless pressure, but that does not make
diamonds. Every particle must go to its place by some law and force we
have not yet attained the mastery of.
We do not know and control the law and force in nature that would
enable us to say to a few million bricks, stones, bits of glass, etc.,
"Fly up through earth, water, and air, and combine into a perfect
palace, with walls, buttresses, towers, and windows all in exact
architectural harmony." But there is such a law and force for
crystals, if not for palaces. There is wisdom to originate and power
to manage such a force. It does not take masses of rock and stick them
together, nor even particles from a fluid, but atoms from a gas. Atoms
as fine as those of air must be taken and put in their place, one by
one, under enormous pressure, to have the resulting crystal as compact
as a diamond.
The force of crystallization is used by us in many inferior ways, as in
making crystals of rock candy, sulphur, salt, etc.
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