Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 27, June, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 27, June, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Two summers ago we visited the localities in Massachusetts which were
famous in the days of Hitchcock and Webster. We found that the beryls
occurred in a very coarse granite, where the quartz appeared in masses
and the felspar in huge crystals. These also occur in finer granite,
and exhibit no indications of veins or connection with each other.
They are few in number, and are soon exhausted by blasting, being
generally very superficial. After removing several tons of the rock at
the locality at North Royalston, where the beryls appear on the summit
of the loftiest hill, our labors were at length rewarded with two
beautiful crystals. One of them was a fine prism an inch in diameter,
of perfect transparency and of a deep sea-green color, which, however
is far from being similar to the transcendent hue of the Granada
emeralds, which exhibit an excess of neither blue nor yellow. The
other was yellowish-green, resembling the chrysoberyls of Brazil.
Other but imperfect crystals were brought to light, some fragments of
which exhibited the deepest golden tints of the topaz, and others
the tints of the sherry-wine colored topazes of Siberia. Magnificent
crystals have been found in these localities in times long past, and
from the fragments and sections of crystals found in the débris of
early explorations we observed the wide range of color and the deep
longitudinal striae which characterize the renowned beryls from the
Altai Mountains, in Siberia. Lively sea- and grass-green, light and
deep yellow, also blue crystals of various shades, have been found
here.
At the quarries on Rollestone Mountain in Fitchburg beryls of a
rich golden color have been blasted out. Some of these approach the
chrysoberyl and topaz in hardness and hue. Others so closely resemble
the yellow diamond that they may readily be taken for that superior
gem. The refractive power of these yellow stones is remarkable, and
the goniometer will probably reveal a higher index than is accorded to
all the varieties of beryl by the learned Abbé Haüy.
Beautiful transparent beryls have been found among the granite hills
of Oxford county in Maine, and the late Governor Lincoln nearly half a
century ago possessed a splendid crystal which would have rivaled the
superb prism found at Mouzzinskaia, and which the Russians value so
highly. The extended and unexplored ledges of granite which rise
from the shores of the ocean at Harpswell in Maine, and stretch
north-westward for nearly a hundred miles, quite to the base of the
White Mountain group, are not only rich in beryls, but they contain
many of the rarest minerals known to the mineralogist. And perhaps
there is no other field of equal extent in the country which offers to
the mineralogist such a harvest of the rare and curious productions of
the mineral kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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