The name Diamond comes from the Greek adamas, which means unconquerable. This term was doubtless applied because of the great resistant power assigned to it by the ancients. Besides the well known tradition that it could not be broken by hammer and anvil, they believed that it could be subdued or broken down only when dipped in warm goat’s blood. Our words adamant and adamantine are also derived from adamas, the latter term still being used to describe the luster of the Diamond. The change of adamas into the word Diamond is thought by some to have come from prefixing to it the Italian diafano, transparent, in allusion to its possessing this property. According to classical mythology the Diamond was first formed by Jupiter, who turned into stone a man known as Diamond of Crete, for refusing to forget him after he had ordered all men to do so. Many medicinal virtues were ascribed to the Diamond, it being regarded as an antidote for poisons and a preventive of mania. The world’s supply of Diamonds has come almost wholly from three countries—India, Brazil and South Africa. Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century India was the only source of Diamonds known. The Diamond fields of India occur chiefly in the eastern and southern portions of the peninsula. The famed region of Golconda is in the southern part. This is the territory whence have come the most celebrated Indian stones, such as the Kohinoor and the Hope Blue. The French traveler Tavernier reported when he was there in 1665, that sixty thousand men were then employed in these mines. Now the mines have all been given up and the region is abandoned. The present yield of Indian Diamonds comes almost wholly from mines in a district south of Allahabad and Benares. The Diamonds occur here, as universally in India, in a conglomerate or sandstone made up of the remains of older rocks. The mines are worked almost wholly by natives of the lower caste, attempts of Europeans to conduct the mining not having met with success. The natives separate the Diamonds by washing, or where the rock is too hard for such methods, break it up by heating and throwing cold water upon it. The production of Diamonds from all of India is at the present time very small, not reaching a million dollars a year in value. It is likely in time to disappear altogether since most of the old mines have been abandoned and even their location forgotten and the returns from the present mines are not very profitable.