In 1772 Erskine published _Observations on the Prevailing Abuses in
the British Army_, a pamphlet which had a large circulation, and in
later life, _Armata_, an imitation of _Gulliver's Travels_. His most
noted speeches have repeatedly appeared in a collected form. See
Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_; Moore's _Diaries_; Fergusson's
_Henry Erskine_ (1882); Dumerit's _Henry Erskine, a Study_ (Paris,
1883); Lord Brougham's _Memoir_, prefixed to Erskine's _Speeches_
(1847); Romilly's _Memoirs_; the _Croker Papers_; Lord Holland's
_Memoirs_.
ERUBESCITE, a native copper-iron sulphide, Cu5FeS4, of importance as an
ore of copper. It crystallizes in the cubic system, the usual form being
that of interpenetrating cubes twinned on an octahedral plane. The faces
are usually curved and rough, and the crystals confusedly aggregated
together. Compact and granular masses are of more frequent occurrence.
The colour on a freshly fractured surface is bronzy or coppery, but in
moist air this rapidly tarnishes with iridescent blue and red colours;
hence the names purple copper ore, variegated copper ore (Ger.
_Buntkupfererz_), horse-flesh ore, and erubescite (from the Lat.
_erubescere_, "to grow red"). The lustre is metallic, and the streak
greyish-black; hardness 3; sp. gr. 5.0. Bornite (after Baron Ignaz von
Born, b. 1742, d. 1791) is a name in common use for this mineral, and it
predates erubescite, the name given by J.D. Dana in 1850, but afterwards
rejected by him; French authors use the name phillipsite, after the
English mineralogist, R. Phillips, who analysed the mineral; both these
earlier names had, however, been previously used for other minerals.
Owing to the frequent presence of mechanically admixed chalcopyrite and
chalcocite, the published analyses of erubescite show wide variations,
the copper, for example, varying from 50 to 70%. Even the best Cornish
crystals enclose a nucleus of chalcopyrite (CuFeS2), and an analysis of
these made in 1839 led to the long-accepted formula Cu3FeS3. Recently,
B.J. Harrington has analysed carefully selected material and obtained
the formula Cu5FeS4.
Erubescite occurs in copper-bearing veins, and has been mined as an ore
of copper at Redruth in Cornwall, Montecatini in the province of Pisa,
Tuscany, Bristol in Connecticut, Acton in Canada, and other localities
in North America. The best crystallized specimens are from the Carn Brea
mine and other copper mines in the neighbourhood of Redruth, and from
Bristol in Connecticut. Recently a few large isolated crystals with the
form of icositetrahedra have been found with calcite and albite in a
gold-vein on Frossnitz-Alpe in the Gross-Venediger, Tirol.
(L. J. S.)
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