FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jesse Fisher]

A number of years ago I acquired this Swiss adularia specimen from Hawthorneden (Frank and Wendy Melanson), and their label indicated that it came from the Naturmuseum Senckenberg (Frankfurt am Main), and was originally in the Scharft collection (dated August 1864). It also came with the old label, which I assume was from Scharft. Unfortunately for me, it is written in old German cursive (Kurrentschrift?), which I have little experience with. Can any of our German friends decipher any of it (other than the mineral and location)? Some of it looks like a discussion of the crystal habit, but otherwise I am lost. Thanks in advance!

[John S. White]

Make that Melanson.


Correction made.
MGS

[Tobi]

[Peter Lemkin]

I don't 'really know' German, although I have to try to 'wade through it' a lot [the new variant], however, the specimen was interesting [I self-collected some that looked like that], and so I looked a while at the label. Whoever wrote it or directed what should be written knew a LOT about what was known about crystallography at the time! There are angles and comments about axis and faces and such. Someone who is to really understand this needs to know not only old German handwriting, but crystallography as written about at the time in Germany....... Whoever wrote that I presume thought it was an unusual habit, or they just loved crystallography and noted every detail of it about every specimen. Send a copy to a good mineral museum in Germany - or a few of them.

[Pete Richards]

If the drawing attached to the label is of this specimen, it appears to be showing a different view. Does the little "wart" on the bottom of the drawing correspond to the slight bump visible in the photo on the left side at the top?

Interesting that the drawing is labeled Figure 37, and uses letters for the faces that have no connection to the (Naumann) symbols in the hand-written label text. Was this specimen published somewhere, maybe well after the label was written?

[Johan Kjellman]

[James Catmur]

Johan

It does not 'kick you out' but has an anti-spam system that tries to stop links to unknown web addresses. We get lots of people trying to spam the forum with links to dangerous web addresses so only admins can add them once we have checked them.

Your specimen can be found in the article:
F. Scharff, 'Über die Bauweise des Feldspaths' can be found on pages 67-110 in:
Abhandlungen der Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft. 6. 1866/67

link:
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10479575?page=74,75

link to the plate (it is Fig 37):
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10479575?page=456,457

[Johan Kjellman]

No worries, I mean no harm, either way the information's out.

cheers

[James Catmur]

Johan

That was a brilliant find, and no harm was made, as we know our anti-spam system can be a pain

James

[Pete Richards]

The Unreadable Label

This Unreadable Label has provided quite an entertaining challenge to me and to others. I was interested because it is clearly about crystal faces, although it uses an old (Naumann) notation for them, and because it had an attached drawing that appeared to be of the actual specimen, although the relationship between the letters used in the drawing and the symbols on the label were different.

I enlisted the help of five native German speakers, three German and two Swiss. All are mineralogists or knowledgeable mineral collectors, three have advanced degrees in mineralogy or related sciences, two are contributing members of FMF, one is a retired curator of an important Swiss museum. The strong consensus was that The Unreadable Label was, in fact, undecipherable except for words here and there. One suggested the need for a Rosetta Stone.

Johan Kjellman’s location of the article which was the source of the figure attached to the label was a major contribution, as were the links to the article and the plate from which the figure came. I obtained the article: On the Construction of Feldspars, by Dr. Friedrich Scharff, published in the Proceedings of the Senckenberg Natural History Society. An attempt at optical character recognition to produce a searchable text was only marginally successful, but it made looking for mentions of Figure 37 in a 47-page document much easier. Our specimen is only mentioned twice, in each case not as an individual specimen but as part of a group of crystals being discussed.

Scharff was concerned about generalizations overshadowing important details in the sciences. He complained about crystallographers drawing “ideal crystals”, showing all known faces for a particular mineral together on a drawing whether they were known to co-occur or not, and generally ignoring differences from crystal to crystal, from locality to locality. In short, he was into the details. The article is largely a discussion of what faces occur on crystals of orthoclase, adularia (a variety of orthoclase), and sometimes albite in specific localities, in different regions, under conditions of different kinds of twinning; and details of the crystals such as whether specific faces are smooth, shiny or dull, striated or stepped, prone to being coated with chlorite. The details.

A table of forms is provided in the paper that gives the correspondence between the letters used in the figures and the Naumann indices of the faces, as used in the text and on The Unreadable Label. Entries from the table that are relevant to this specimen are provided here (and below, in a less confusing format), along with the Miller indices that correspond to the Naumann indices on the label.

Face Naumann Miller
Indices Indices
m ∞P∞ (100)
z ∞P3 (310)
T ∞P (110)
x +P∞ (101)
o +P (111)
q +2/3P∞ (203)


The Unreadable Label holds Scharff’s very sketchy notes about the specimen in Figure 37, of the sort that were the data for Scharff’s paper. One piece of his shorthand: Scharff uses a colon (:) to indicate a relationship of some sort between two or more faces. Thus a corner between three faces P, X, and Y is notated P : X : Y, an edge or an angle between two faces as P : X. Integrating the partial transcriptions/ translations of my five experts plus those already posted on this site, I offer the following. My interpretive text is indicated by [square brackets].

______________________________________________________________________

Distorted crystal on a … striation …. On the largest [crystal], prism faces (100) and (310)
(? - for this face [the interfacial angle with] (110) [is] about 150° instead of [the calculated]
148°) and … moderately … . (310) striated along the edge with (110), and matt and
lustrous . (101) in … rhombic … . (111) lustrous. (203) lustrous.

Small iron roses attached, … crevasse …

August [18]64 Andermatt near ? 5 Swiss Francs
______________________________________________________________________

According to Jesse Fisher, this is a Scharff specimen. Scharff wrote the article, and presumably wrote the label. The label has a drawing of the specimen, published in the paper. The specimen came from the Naturmuseum Senckenberg, and the paper was published by the Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft. It makes a pretty complete story for an Unreadable Label!

Pete Richards