Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/89

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EMIGRANT DIAMONDS IN AMERICA.
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points where the several tracks marking their migrations converge upon one another, and the former summit of the ice sheet. The broader the "fan" of their distribution, the nearer to the latter must the point be located.

It is by no means improbable that when the barren territory about Hudson Bay is thoroughly explored a region for profitable

Common Forms of Quartz Crystals. Common Forms of Diamonds. The African stones most resemble the figure above at the left (octahedron). The Wisconsin stones most resemble the figure above at the right (dodecahedron).

diamond mining may be revealed, but in the meantime we may be sure that individual stones will occasionally be found in the new American homes into which they were imported long before the days of tariffs and ports of entry. Mother Nature, not content with lavishing upon our favored nation the boundless treasures locked up in her mountains, has robbed the territory of our Canadian cousins of the rich soils which she has unloaded upon our lake States, and of the diamonds with which she has sowed them.

The range of the present distribution of the diamonds, while perhaps not limited exclusively to the "kettle moraine," will, as the events have indicated, be in the main confined to it. This moraine, with its numerous subordinate ranges marking halting places in the final retreat of the ice, has now been located with sufficient accuracy by the geologists of the United States Geological Survey and others, approximately as entered upon the accompanying map. Within the territory of the United States the large number of observations of the rock scorings makes it clear that the ice of each lobe or glacier moved from the central portion toward the marginal moraines, which are here indicated by dotted bands. In the wilderness of Canada the observations have been rare, but the few data which have been gleaned are there represented by arrows pointed in the direction of ice movement.

There is every encouragement for persons who reside in or near the marginal moraines to search in them for the scattered jewels, which may be easily identified and which have a large commercial as well as scientific value.