FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Woody Thompson]

A beautiful fluorite/galena combo from Wheal Mary Ann.

[Woody Thompson]

Gemmy, intense blue fluorite from the Holmbush Mine, Callington, Cornwall. This is in the Russell Collection.

[Woody Thompson]

The large and famous siderite pocket from Wheal Maudlin.

[Woody Thompson]

Close-up of siderite with quartz, Wheal Maudlin, Cornwall.

[Woody Thompson]

St. Agnes chalcopyrite.

[Woody Thompson]

Another form of chalcopyrite from St. Agnes, Cornwall.

[Woody Thompson]

A rare location piece of Cornish silver.

[Woody Thompson]

And finally, one of those cases of huge and remarkable specimens that Jesse mentioned as being in the Geological Museum adjacent to the NHM. Note the boulder-size specimen of schorl and white apatite crystals from the famous old locality in Bovey Tracey, Devon!

[arturo shaw]

Back from London, pain on my legs, but with some pictures that will be posted in the Spanish side (sorry :-) ) as soon as I can.

I will write more comments later but I need to say two things now.

First: London museums should advice on their internet page about the dates of the "Term Holydays". Because of that I have had only 45 minutes to visit the Collection till the security people push me out (almost literally) and that thanks to the fact that it was "Last Friday of the Month" and I could join the party downstairs. :-)

Second: In the line of Jordi's proposal. Wouldn't be nice if the Museums would keep a database of the specimens being shown (with pictures or not) that could be accessed from the Internet? I think that could be a good step forward in the path of "knowledge dissemination" and may be a not-so-difficult one.

Let me now finish with a picture of a poster that would make more sense in this side that the Spanish one. Do you recognize the face? ;-)

Cheers

Arturo

[Tom Tucker]

I had the pleasure of visiting the Natural History Museum about 12 years ago. I remember most the large BOURNONITE specimen from Cornwall, and also the interesting "Sunday Rock" - a laminated recent deposition of microcrystalline BARYTE, which as I recall the explanation - has obviously thicker lamina every seventh layer - due to the miners not working on Sunday, and the water pumps being shut off, permitting a thicker deposit of new mineral. Of course, I suppose it's not really a mineral, since the hand of Man was significant in its origin.
A feature I wish all museums would adopt - there was a poster on a wall with an index to the various cases where the different species could be seen. It might not have been current or complete, but it was helpful in locating all the ANATASE, and TYUYAMUNITE for example.
Another bonus - near to the museum was a publications sales office of the Geological Survey, where a very helpful saleslady led me to a variety of publications about British geology.
A great museum, photography allowed, and only a handful of other visitors during the two or three hours I was there.

[Woody Thompson]

Tom, they still have fantastic and very large specimens of Herodsfoot Mine bournonite on display. Here are two that caught my eye. The first one is in The Vault. (I spent over 8 hours just photographing some of the minerals in the main gallery!).

[Woody Thompson]

And here's another one. I went to Herodsfoot Mine on my trip last fall. There weren't many specimens like this lying about!

[Woody Thompson]

And I took my cap off in respect to this remarkable specimen from the Virtuous Lady!

[Woody Thompson]

Here's another Cornish classic.

[Woody Thompson]

And just to prove that the NHM collection is really DEEP, this large cancrinite specimen came from just down the road here in Maine! (An occurrence of sodalite and cancrinite in a syenite rock called "litchfieldite". Virtually the entire pluton is covered by glacial sediments, so all the specimens like this are from float boulders).