The occurrence of fluid cavities in quartz, chalcedony, sapphire, and
other minerals, is due at times to cavernous structures formed during
the growth of these minerals, when the crystalline substances, for some
reason, instead of filling these up solid, will avoid the caverns and
enclose the liquid of crystallization. In agate inclusions this is found
with silicious content, possibly due to the fact that it is to an extent
carbonic acid gas, or water containing salt or some other foreign
substance. In agate chalcedony, whether in pebbles as minute as a
pinhead, or in amygdules several feet across, the liquid is enclosed
because the walls of the gas-pores in the rock, which are frequently
almond-shaped, are gradually becoming smaller, or rather the walls
thicken by the deposition of the silica forming agate, chalcedony, or
any impenetrable layers, or else an impenetrable form of quartz; then
again, frequently toward the centre or when the liquid forms less
rapidly, or through some change, the quartz becomes crystalline, either
colorless, smoky, or amethystine, and this is due to various inclusions.
This gradual thickening of the walls means that the aperture into which
the liquid penetrates becomes smaller and smaller until at last it is
entirely sealed, so that it becomes enclosed in a kind of nature’s
water-bottle, these being sometimes as large as in the chalcedony
specimens from Uruguay; this is also the case with the hydrolites and
the enhydros, when they can be shaken and the water rattles as in a
bottle.
An occasional small Redondo Beach, California, or Medford, Oregon pebble
contains a moving bubble of air in liquid.
Most wonderful specimens of rutilated quartz are the great, rich brown,
possibly titanium-colored masses in the Morgan Collection at the
American Museum of Natural History, that in the Vaux Collection at the
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and a smaller mass in the
British Museum; these were all obtained near Middlesex, Vermont. The
rutile is a rich transparent or translucent red, varying in thinness
from that of an ordinary needle to that of a knitting-needle, and even
to that of a thin lead-pencil. Wonderful specimens are also found in the
Alps of St. Gotthard, in Madagascar, and in Alexander County, North
Carolina, where they are found in quantity as minute crystals of a rich
red or golden yellow.
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