56 pages, full colour.

 

UKJMM No. 23 Shipping: UK (second class) £9.00 Europe (air mail) £12.00 Rest of World (surface) £12.00 Rest of World (air mail) £14.00

 

Following special issues of the UKJMM which dealt with recent mineralogical discoveries in Scotland, Ireland and the north of England, we have amassed a backlog of articles of more general interest. This issue goes some way toward reducing the problem, but there are still a considerable number awaiting publication and many in preparation. These include reviews of the mineralogy of classic areas of the British Isles, such as the Strontian mines, the Isle of Skye and the Mid-Wales Orefield, a mineralogy of Greystone Quarry in Cornwall, and the remaining parts of the series of articles dealing with recent mineralogical discoveries in the British Isles: namely Wales, Derbyshire and the Midlands, and southwest England. These will appear in forthcoming issues of the journal.

UKJMM Website

The internet gives access to a vast store of information that is relevant to collectors and mineralogists. Many mineralogical journals have a presence on the web and following the last edition of the UKJMM, we decided to follow suit and develop a website. This is online at http://www.ukjmm.co.uk. It includes a description of the contents of each journal and the availability of back issues, information for advertisers, subscription rates, links to other sites of mineralogical interest, a brief history of the journal and some biographical information on the team. As time goes on we will develop the site to include further data and this process involves you, the readers, feeding back information about what you would like to see. Please visit the site and send comments to the webmaster.

Index

Indexes provide ready access to the information contained in books and journals, but they are time consuming to produce and are often neglected by scientific publications, which rely on abstracts and online databases to make the information in their articles accessible. Although these electronic resources are available to academics, they are not easily consulted by collectors, so we have produced an index to issues 11 to 20 of the UKJMM, covering the years 1992 to 2000 to compliment the index for 1 to 10 produced by Mick Cooper and Simon Howell. The index to issues 11 to 20, compiled by Mick Wolfe, is available as a free RTF download on the UKJMM website. For those of our readers who do not have access to the internet, a printed copy comprising 28 A4 pages, which contains, author, locality and species indexes, is available from the editor at the address on the inside back cover. A donation of two pounds would be appreciated from those who request hard copies, to defray the cost of printing and postage.

Other News

February saw the UK debut of Alec Livingstone’s long-awaited book on the Minerals of Scotland (reviewed on page 47). Only 1000 copies were printed, so anyone who would like one should contact the Royal Museum of Scotland as soon as possible. Minerals of Scotland is different in content and format to the volumes which cover the Caldbeck Fells, Cornwall and Devon, and Wales. It emphasises the historical development of mineralogy in Scotland and the people who made it happen as much as the minerals. It is a book no serious collector of British minerals can afford to be without.

English Nature, the Russell Society and the Geoconservation Commission recently organised a one day conference at Salford University on the future of mineral collecting. In view of the collecting restrictions that have been introduced at a number of localities in Britain, most notably in the Caldbeck Fells, this was of interest to many. It provided a forum which brought together landowners, statutory authorities and the collecting community to try and find a way forward. A proceedings volume that will summarise the diverse range of views held by the delegates is to published later in the year and will be reviewed in the next issue of the UKJMM.

The conference spent considerable time debating the scientific value of collecting following an introductory talk by Brian Young of the British Geological Survey. Don Edwards communicated the dealer’s point of view, while Brian Jackson of the Royal Museum of Scotland and Bob Symes formerly Keeper of Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum presented a museum and academic view of collecting. Roy Starkey gave a presentation on collecting from the amateur perspective and Colin Prosser explained the legislative framework and English Nature’s role in site protection.

A positive picture of the scientific importance of mineral collecting emerged and the part collectors play in rescuing specimens from quarries, mines and rapidly eroding exposures was recognised. The recreational and educational value of collecting was a little lost in all of this. Collectors need to emphasise this very positive aspect of the hobby in the discussions to follow. As ever, there is also the need to foster good relations with landowners and quarrying companies to make sure sites remain open for future generations to visit.

Finally, and on a more sombre note, we record the passing of two people who contributed much to mineralogy in general and as authors and referees to this journal in particular. George Ryback was perhaps best known to mineralogists for his work compiling the lists of minerals new to the British Isles published in Mineralogical Magazine and more recently as editor of the Journal of the Russell Society. He collaborated with Stephen Moreton to produce an excellent series of articles on the minerals of Ireland which were serialised in issues 10 to 12 of this journal and also acted as occasional and anonymous referee for other articles. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the mineralogy of Britain and Ireland. Kemp Meikle contributed an account of the classic site for greenockite at Bishopton in Scotland which was published in issue 11 and was well known for his love of Scottish minerals. Their deaths are a sad loss to mineralogy and both will be missed.

Whenever and wherever collectible objects change hands for substantial (and sometimes even modest) sums of money there is a temptation to produce an item of value from materials of lower or even inconsequential value, creating a fake or forgery. This temptation is perhaps not as prevalent in mineralogy as it is in antiques or fine art, but it does exist. A few examples of mineral fakes and forgeries from across the world are given below. Collectors and dealers need to be aware of the various fakes and forgeries which are on the market and should examine new specimen discoveries with a critical eye.

3 pages.

The mining districts of northern England have long been famous for fine mineral specimens. These include remarkable fluorite crystals, which are highly fluorescent and deeply coloured. Of all the coloured fluorites, green crystals are perhaps the most highly prized. The Rogerley Mine in Weardale has produced exceptionally fine specimens of green fluorite for the last three decades. It is currently operated as a specimen mine by UK Mining Ventures, a company owned by a group of American collectors and mineral dealers. The mineralogy of the deposit is relatively simple, comprising major primary fluorite and galena in clay filled cavities in metasomatic replacement flats and veins. Analyses of the trace element composition of coloured fluorite from the Rogerley Mine shows no obvious correspondence between colour and REE content. Thus rare earth elements are probably not the primary chromaphores in the fluorite.

12 pages.

Fluorite ore (fluorspar) from the North Pennines is both colourful and rare earth element-rich and it has long been suggested that rare earth elements (REE) held within the lattice of fluorite are responsible for the range of colours seen in the mineral. Although a number of fluorspar and fluorite samples have been analysed to discover any relationship between rare earth content and colour there is still no consensus. Part of the problem has been inappropriate sampling. Detailed mineralogy and petrography of paragenetically early fluorspar show it to carry discrete REE minerals including phosphates (monazite and xenotime) and fluorocarbonates (mainly synchysite). Similarly early fluorite carries synchysite inclusions. By contrast, later generations of fluorspar, as exemplified by material from Rogerley Mine, are free of discrete REE minerals so that fluorite in those ores becomes the most significant REE-bearing phase. Any future rare earth element analyses of North Pennine fluorite should be undertaken after petrographical and paragenetic studies of that fluorite and its associated fluorspar ore in order to establish the presence or absence of any other REE-bearing phases.

6 pages.

A large cliff fall from the west side of Peak Hill, Sidmouth, Devon has recently revealed remarkable pale blue to honey brown barite crystals in cavities in calcite nodules. These are from the same locality as specimens reported from Sidmouth in the late-nineteenth century, which were described erroneously as celestine. The barite is restricted to a few distinct nodule bands in red and green mudstone rocks of Middle Triassic Ladinian Age, which form the Sidmouth Mudstone Formation. The crystals, which reach up to 70 mm in length, are usually tabular on the c-axis and commonly elongated along the a-axis. They are strongly fluorescent and phosphorescent. Barite crystallisation appears to have taken place at a late-stage in the diagenesis of the mudstone, after the calcite nodules formed, by slow diffusion into the cavities through a restricted series of fractures.

9 pages.

Copper minerals occur in beach pebbles derived from the chalk of Speeton Cliff, near Flamborough Head. Millimetre-size cores composed of copper and cuprite and surrounded by alteration haloes of pale green malachite and an unidentified copper chloride mineral. Minor azurite is also present. This appears to be the first report of copper mineralisation from the chalk of the Yorkshire coast.

1 page.

Bechererite is an exceptionally rare zinc copper sulphate silicate that forms as a result of the post-mining oxidation of copper and zinc sulphides in mine spoil. It has been identified on specimens collected at five mines in the Central Wales Orefield in the counties of Ceredigion and Powys and at one mine in the Caldbeck Fells, Cumbria. Bechererite typically occurs as minute, colourless, pale blue and pale green inverted pyramidal and cone-shaped crystals terminated by bright pedion faces. These appear to be characteristic of the species and are not readily confused with any other mineral found in post-mining assemblages except susannite.

2 pages.

A remarkable occurrence of the rare zinc iron manganese mineral chalcophanite is reported from Drosgol Mine in the Central Wales Orefield. Chalcophanite forms dark grey to black masses in veins in bleached, pinkish brecciated mudstone of Ashgill Age, exposed at a high level on the Camdwr Lode, where it cuts across the flank of Drosgol Hill. The mineralisation is interpreted as a highly oxidised supergene remnant of original hypogene mineralisation, with manganese supplied by wallrock leaching and zinc by the oxidation of sphalerite.

2 pages.

In July 1997 a portable XRF analyzer was field tested underground within the workings of the mine known as the ‘Cobalt Mine’ located beneath The Wizard Inn and the National Trust car park on Alderley Edge. This fieldwork was carried out in an attempt to assay in situ the cobalt, nickel and vanadium content of a cobalt-bearing wad (asbolane) present as coatings in fault cavities and as segregations within the sandstone wall-rock. Analyses show that the cobalt, vanadium and nickel content of the ore is extremely variable, but bulk ore had a low cobalt content. The technique is useful as a rapid means of determining the approximate grade of ores where there is no other obvious characteristic to rely on.

6 pages.