11 FEBRUARY 1871, Page 3

A Cape journal publishes an official statement, from which it

appears that during 1870, 5,661 diamonds were shipped from Port Elizabeth, valued at £125,000, and an estimate giving the total value of the stones shipped from the Cape as £220,000. The Times upon this suggests that the value of diamonds must fall, whereupon Mr. Harry Emanuel says the American demand is far in -excess of the supply, that the Cape diamonds are very poor, and that the value will not decline perceptibly. He may be right or not, but the odd thing is the imaginary value placed upon the discovery of the stones. Here is a whole colony gone wild about mines which promise to yield in time about a tenth of the sum that any new cultivation such as tobacco would produce.