8 Comments

I enjoy your essays on minerals in your collection. I no longer collect and have donated all of my samples to the college museum where I taught for 35 years. Your essay on biotite reminded me of a sample I collected in the late 60s while working for a mineral exploration company. It has a beautiful green euhedral chlorite crystal about 2-3 centimeters wide set on a cluster of brown limonite rhombohedrons that are probably pseudomorphs after calcite or perhaps siderite. Found in an exploration pit dug into one of the many small scarns on Mt. Baldy, Little Belt Mountains, Montana. Please keep the essays coming!

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Thanks! I have no expectation of stopping, and plan to continue the three-per-week schedule as much as I can.

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This is my hometown! I live 10 minutes away from Cardiff - I got chased out of the Cardiff mine two years ago by the owner (I had been told not was owned by Faraday Township but it turns out that was NOT correct).

I have an almost identically-sized mica sample that came out of an excavation on the north shore of Eels Lake, not far from there. One of the perks of my being a builder is that I have access to new excavations and blast sites on a regular basis, you never know what will turn up here

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Well, that's pretty cool!!

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So biotite (usually pronounced by-oh-tight) probably should be bee-yot-ite?

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I guess if we want to be true to the French pronunciation of M. Biot's name (bee-yoh, no 't' sounded) we'd have to say bee-yoh-eet! :) Or maybe we could blend it like some French words into bee-yoh-teet! I'll probably remain an Ugly American and say by-oh-tight :)

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Hilarious end to that piece! Yes grateful for Queen Anne's simple name.

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Tragabigzandaite! lol

A little free association put me in mind of the last (I think) brothel on Last Chance Gulch in Helena: Big Dorothy’s. Maybe there was a Big Zanda’s somewhere too.

Thanks for another fun, informative read.

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