Major Crocoite Discoveries at the Adelaide Mine, Tasmania

23 Pages·2013·2.86 MB·English

Major
Crocoite Discoveries
at the Adelaide Mineı Tasmania
Thomas P. Moore Wendell E. Wilson
The Mineralogical Record The Mineralogical Record
2709 E. Exeter St. 4631 Paseo Tubutama
Tucson, Arizona 85716 Tucson, AZ 85750
[email protected] [email protected]
In August 2012 an extraordinary watercourse pocket of crocoite
crystals was discovered at the famous Adelaide mine near Zeehan,
Tasmania—the most recent in a long but intermittent history of
such discoveries dating back to the 1890s. Collecting of specimens
from the watercourse began in early September; as of this writing,
the full extent of the pocket has yet to be determined.
INTRODUCTION stare far, far back down the length of a watercourse pocket, the walls
Mineral collectors have always held crocoite in high esteem. of which were covered by brilliant red, splint-like, gleaming-wet
The appeal of the lead chromate comes mainly from its vivid red- crocoite crystals. This new “Red River Find” (as it has been dubbed
orange color and (in well-prepared specimens) its high luster. And by Adam Wright) proved to be dramatic indeed.
maybe a little charisma comes also from the extreme delicacy of
the specimens, which typically are masses of stiff, stalk-like crystals THE DUNDAS MINERAL FIELD
attached to each other by small amounts of earthy brown and black Crocoite was described as a species in 1764, from type mate-
oxide material. Then there is the allure of the fact that nearly all rial which came from the Tsvetnoi mine, one of the gold mines of
market-available crocoite specimens are from Tasmania, the most the Berezovsk district in Russia. Even in recent years, small lots
remote and exotic-sounding of Australian states and, it’s easy to of Russian crocoite, some of it newly collected (!), have surfaced
think, very far from anywhere else. (Cooper, 1994; Moore, 1995), but these Russian “locality” items
One often thinks of Tasmania in just that way, even after having do not come close to rivaling the best Tasmanian crocoites, all of
visited there—it is remote and exotic. But a visit is not only surviv- which have emerged from the old lead-silver mines of the Dundas
able, it is fully enjoyable; Tasmanians are quite civilized, hospitable mineral field near Zeehan. These mines were active during the 1880s
and good-humored, and yes, even English-speaking (albeit in accents and 1890s, but by the time of World War I nearly all of them had
that can bemuse people from “the mainland,” as they call all the rest failed as ore producers and had been closed down. But intermit-
of Australia). Tasmania is also very beautiful, with a wide-open, tent specimen-mining, especially since about 1970, has kept the
green, dreamy countryside marked by stout eucalyptus and oaks crocoite magic alive.
and dense fern forests; and for the most part these big-sky slabs of Most late 20th-century crocoite specimens have been taken from
landscape remain unspoiled by the works of man. the Red Lead and Adelaide mines, whose entrances lie only 900
One of us (TPM) was fortunate enough to visit Tasmania recently meters apart, on different slopes of a rise called Stichtite Hill. Both
to view the new crocoite discovery in situ: Crouching in a tight, mines have seen major pocket discoveries, but the pocket found in
muddy drift of the Adelaide lead-silver mine, 10 kilometers east of 2012 might well turn out to be greatest of all. It was breached in
the town of Zeehan near the western coast of the island, one could mid-year by The Adelaide Mining Company Pty. Ltd., the current
The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012 651
Figure 1.
Location map.
(The Probert
Encyclopedia, 1938).
lessee of the Adelaide mine, and as of this writing in August 2012, tion and starvation bring on death: ironically used, the term refers
exploration of and collecting from the new find is proceeding apace, to the situation of innocent hikers, but it is rooted in memories of
and the end of the watercourse has not yet come into view. A DVD what always happened to convicts foolhardy enough to escape from
expertly fashioned by Bryan Swoboda of BlueCap Productions, the Tasmanian prison camps.
enclosed with this issue of the Mineralogical Record, is an effort When a prospector named James “Philosopher” Smith found a
to preserve a record of the great pocket; this article is another. large, rich deposit of tin at Mt. Bischoff in 1871, major exploitation
of Tasmanian mineral resources was catalyzed. The Mt. Bischoff
EARLY HISTORY tin mine at Waratah, about 50 km north of the Dundas field, had
The first European eyes to rest on Tasmania belonged to someone become the richest tin mine in the world by the 1880s, and mining
aboard a vessel commanded by Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tas- there did not stop until the 1940s (Haupt, 1988; Bottrill and Baker,
man, in 1642. After dropping anchor briefly on the western coast 2008). During the later 1870s and into the 1880s, numerous other
not far south of present-day Zeehan, and after gathering biological mines for tin, copper, gold and silver were inaugurated in Tasmania,
samples including intriguing cuboid specimens of wombat feces, especially in its western sector, and in the mid-1880s the lead-silver
Tasman’s ship left again and sailed on to discover New Zealand. deposits of what would be the Zeehan and Dundas mineral fields
Desultory British and French explorations followed, but nothing were discovered. According to Bottrill and Baker (2008), the Zeehan
of a “colonial” nature occurred until 1802, when a British ship, field was discovered in 1882, when George Renison Bell found a
in order to forestall French plans of settlement, came down from “substantial” galena lode near the present town center of Zeehan,
New South Wales to claim “Van Diemen’s Land” (as the British and rapid development of mining just east of the town commenced.
then called Tasmania) for the Crown (Stewart and Daly, 2008). Miners rushed to the area, seeking the numerous shallow, silver-
The island was officially renamed Tasmania in 1856, after being rich gossans, but because of the rapid exhaustion of these deposits,
granted self-government. and because of mining difficulties in this mostly flat, waterlogged
In 1803 a British party of 49 would-be settlers, including area, prospectors gradually moved into the hillier terrain to the
24 convicts, arrived in Tasmania, and 240 more convicts were east. There, the Dundas field was found in about 1887 by “Comet”
deposited at the site of present-day Hobart in 1804. In 1822 the Johnstone, and the first lease was pegged in 1888 (Bottrill et al.,
first European settlement in western Tasmania took the form of a 2006). Most of the other major deposits of the Dundas field had
penal colony set up on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbor. This been discovered by 1900.
prison camp, plus two more established later, served as dumping During the heyday of commercial mining, i.e. from the mid-
grounds for the worst convicts from mainland Australia and from 1880s through about 1915, Zeehan was the third largest town in
the mother country, and did so until 1873, when the last prisoner Tasmania, after Hobart and Launceston. Nicknamed “Silver City,”
left the island. This history gave rise to the term “bushwalking,” it was a typical boom-and-bust mining town, with a population of
which means wandering through Tasmanian forests until dehydra- 10,000 people (population in 2006: 845), a gingerbread-looking
652 The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012
Figures 2 and 3 (above and right). The West
Coast Pioneers’ Memorial Museum in Zeehan,
Tasmania. Tom Moore photos.
opera house (the Gaiety Theater, visited by Lola Montez), 27 drink-
ing establishments, and the Zeehan Stock Exchange. Main Street
today offers tourists only a few antique but well-maintained houses,
souvenir shops, and, the star of the show, the West Coast Pioneers’
Memorial Museum. This excellent little museum (formerly the
home of the Zeehan School of Mines and Metallurgy, 1893–1960)
boasts two floors of creative displays of mining artifacts, documents,
old photos, etc., and a large room full of cases displaying mineral
specimens including enormous crocoite crystal groups brought out
a century and more ago.
Most of the main crocoite deposits were near the town of Dundas,
which in 1891 boasted a population of 1,080 and three hotels (Bottrill
et al., 2006), but is now an overgrown field of ruins. A bumpy dirt
road is all that’s left to show the way to the former town center, in
and around which one finds only weathered foundations of houses
topped by resurgent rainforest vegetation. But after the townsite was
abandoned, prospectors moved on to establish other major mines in
the region, including the Renison (tin), Rosebery (silver-lead-zinc)
and Mount Lyell (copper-gold) mines, all still in operation today.
GEOLOGY AND MINERALS
The mines of the Dundas mineral field lie within a four-square-
kilometer area whose western border lies 1 km east of the ruins
of Dundas and 10 km east of Zeehan; major workings include the
Dundas Extended, Adelaide, Red Lead, Andersons, West Comet,
Platt, Comet, Maestries, Kosminsky, and South Comet mines. The
geology and mineralogy of the field is discussed in detail by Chap-
man (1972), Haupt (1988) and Bottrill et al. (2006), but a very brief
summary is offered here.
Late Precambrian metasedimentary rocks of the Tyennan Block
lie to the east of the Dundas field and crop out as an anticlinal dome were thrust onto lightly altered marine sedimentary rocks on the
in its center; slightly younger, much less altered sedimentary rocks west and south of the field. During the Devonian, compressional
lie to the west and south. Around the dome lie Cambrian-age intru- tectonic movement, accompanied by metal-rich granite intrusions,
sions of serpentinite; the chromium needed to form crocoite was squeezed the sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks against the
derived from original magnesiochromite-chromite (locally altered serpentinite masses, and faults with extensive shear zones formed,
to stichtite), Cr-rich spinel, and Cr-rich muscovite (“fuchsite”) in striking generally north, at the contacts. Wide bands of brecciation
the serpentinite. During the Cambrian, the serpentinite intrusions in the shear zones channeled metal-rich hydrothermal fluids from
The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012 653
Figure 4. Exhibit
of Adelaide mine
specimens in the
West Coast Pioneers’
Memorial Museum.
Tom Moore photo.
Figure 5. Exhibit
of large crocoite
specimens from
the Adelaide mine
in the West Coast
Pioneers’ Memorial
Museum. Tom
Moore photo.
underlying granite, altering much serpentinite to a peculiar rock because the pods and lenses of unaltered galena contained less silver
type called listwanite, composed of Ca-Mn carbonates, quartz, than the gossans; also, the galena pods were small and erratic and
and fuchsite (Praszkier and Wright, 2010), and precipitating pods the shallow ones were soon exhausted. No other veins of primary
and veins of argentiferous galena, with minor arsenopyrite, pyrite, ores have been discovered at depth.
sphalerite and antimony sulfosalts. Finally, rapid weathering (in this The dominance of crocoite over other secondary lead minerals
very wet climate) of the near-surface veins by acidic groundwaters in the Dundas field generally, and in the Adelaide and Red Lead
altered most of the sulfides to supergene minerals in a setting of mines in the southern part of the field in particular, is explained by
ubiquitous muddy gossan containing goethite, limonite, coronadite, Bottrill et al. (2006) as a function not only of the great abundance
chalcophanite, “fuchsite,” gibbsite, carbonates and halloysite clays. of chromium but also of the fact that crocoite is less soluble and
Profitable mining for lead and silver turned out to be short-lived more stable than most other lead minerals at the low pH levels
654 The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012
which generally prevail in the area; also, Cr6(cid:2), the chromium sprays of acicular dundasite are found in some zones; these appear
valence state in crocoite, is much more mobile in fluid environ- to alter readily to cream-white gibbsite. Lilac to purple patches of
ments than Cr3(cid:2), and so the necessary ions can travel farther and massive stichtite in serpentine are well known from several areas in
be more widely dispersed. Lead, on the other hand, is relatively the Dundas field, but not in the crocoite mines; the type locality is
immobile in groundwater and must await the arrival of other, more Stichtite Hill, uphill from the Adelaide and Red Lead mines (Bottril
mobile elements with which to join in the formation of secondary and Graham, 2008). The list of very rare species, seen in massive
minerals. As a visit to the mineral room in the West Coast Pioneers’ form and as microcrystals, includes three new species for which the
Memorial Museum shows, crocoite was vastly more common in the Red Lead mine is the type locality: petterdite, philipsbornite and
Dundas field than anglesite, cerussite, mimetite, pyromorphite or reynoldsite (Kampf et al., 2012), as well as bindheimite, hinsdalite-
phosgenite, although all of these species were found occasionally plumbogummite, grimaldiite, linarite and even native lead, an old
in well crystallized examples. sample of which from “Mt. Dundas” is largely altered today to
Beautiful bright yellow “chrome” cerussite, sought avidly by litharge and hydrocerussite (Bottrill and Baker, 2008).
collectors, might indeed be called the only other signature mineral
of the Dundas field. But Bottrill et al. (2006) cite studies suggesting CROCOITE FROM THE DUNDAS FIELD
that chromium may not be, after all, the source of the yellow color of All relevant sources say that the first Tasmanian discovery of
this cerussite; for example, Melchiorre et al. (2006) suggest that the crocoite occurred at the Heazlewood lead-silver mine near Waratah,
color is due to organic matter or radioactivity. However, the color has 50 km north of the Dundas field, but the date of the discovery is
a close correlation to associated crocoite, and spectroscopic studies unclear. Mining records indicate that the Heazlewood deposit was
indicate that Cr is indeed a chromophore—the matter is under active found by Bell in 1884 and the lease granted in 1886. It is likely that
investigation as of 2012 (Ralph Bottrill, personal communication). the presence of a mineral as colorful as crocoite would have been
Specimens showing small but bright, dark green to yellow-green noticed very quickly, and indeed the earliest mine-inspector reports
crystals of pyromorphite attractively associated with red crocoite of 1888 mention crocoite and “wulfenite” (probably yellow cerus-
are a specialty of the Platt mine, now leased by Bruce Stark (Adam site) (Ralph Bottrill, personal communication). William F. Petterd,
Wright of The Adelaide Mining Company has been known to bring the earliest summarizer of the known minerals of Tasmania, stated
pretty specimens of this material to the Tucson Show). Sharp, in his 1893 Catalogue of minerals known to occur in Tasmania
colorless and transparent to milky white, dagger-shaped crystals (published in 1894) that crocoite (“crocoisite”) was discovered at
of anglesite reaching 3 cm came from some of the Dundas mines the Heazlewood mine “a few years back.”
in the early days, and pale yellow mimetite crystals exceptionally Haupt (1988) and Kissling (1996) believe that crocoite was first
reaching 1 cm are known as well. Very rarely, good phosgenite discovered at the Adelaide mine in 1891, the date of the earliest
specimens showing sharp, grayish, translucent crystals to 2 cm were mining there; the 1892 edition of Dana’s System of Mineralogy does
found. Masses of yellow-green to gray, modified cubic crystals of not yet mention it, but by 1893 crocoite was well-known from the
chlorargyrite to 5 mm individually are occasionally unearthed in Adelaide mine; Petterd (1894) wrote:
the Adelaide mine (Bottrill et al., 2006). Snow-white to pale green
Figure 6. Geologic cross-
section through the veins of
the Dundas ore field (after
Bottrill and Baker, 2008).
Chromium migrates into the
weathering lead-rich sulfide
lenses while aluminum and
phosphorus migrate in from
the sedimentary rocks.
Weathering of the gossan
zone allows these elements to
combine to form secondary
minerals including crocoite.
The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012 655
Figure 7. Geology of the Dundas area, showing the alignment of
the major mines along breccia zones that are near chromium-rich
serpentine bodies (after Bottrill and Baker, 2008).
At the Adelaide Proprietary mine at Dundas, this species is quartz” (Bottrill and Baker, 2008). Bottrill et al. (2006) remark
very plentiful. It commonly occurs in large columnar prisms, that at Dundas Extended, crocoite crystals occur characteristically
often several inches in length, that penetrate the vesicular ferro- on whitish, granular, quartz-rich matrix, and some are of a distinct
manganese gossan that overcaps the lode. In the workings of orange-pink hue; they add that a few specimens showing good
this mine some extremely fine and beautiful specimens have prismatic crocoite crystals were brought out after 2000.
been obtained, the mineral often coating white Dundasite, In the 1890s the West Comet mine (also called the Mount
and occasionally associated with crystals and large bunches Dundas mine and the Central Dundas mine; Lieber, 1989) pro-
of Cerussite and more rarely Anglesite. duced huge quantities of crocoite, reportedly including perfectly
terminated crystals to 12 cm long, but a specimen-mining effort
Over the last 120 years or so the best sources of crocoite speci-
in the early 1970s was unsuccessful (Lancaster, 1977; Bottrill and
mens in the Dundas field have been the Adelaide and the Red Lead
Baker, 2008). A few good specimens have been recovered in recent
mines, and a few others as well—although the Adelaide is probably
years by John Bishop (Ralph Bottrill, personal communication).
responsible for over 90% of the crocoite specimens in collections
As mentioned earlier, the Platt mine (or “prospect”) is known for
today. The Kapi mine in Northeast Dundas (just off the northern
color-contrasted specimens of crocoite and pyromorphite, both spe-
edge of the map in Fig. 7) once produced attractive specimens in
cies occurring as crystals which rarely reach 1 cm; the pyromorphite
which bright crocoite crystals are associated with yellow cerus-
is apple-green to dark green, and the crocoite crystals commonly
site and yellow phosgenite crystals; by the late 1970s this mine
show very sharp terminations. Platt was begun as a specimen mine
had “passed its zenith in specimen production” (Lancaster, 1977),
in 1976 by Michael Phelan and Joe Pringle (Lancaster, 1977), and
although there have been sporadic recoveries of good specimens
is continuing so under Bruce Stark, its current lessee. The Kosmin-
since then (Bottrill et al., 2006).
sky mine is probably located on the same vein system, and during
During the 2000s, Michael and Eleanor Phelan established a
the 1970s it produced specimens very similar to those from Platt.
home on the old Dundas town site (Howard, 2009) while operating
The Comet and Maestries mines were worked from opposite
the Dundas Extended mine, where they found specimens showing
ends of the same vein deposit, and in 1895 they were united to
“small but beautifully terminated crocoite in unusual bipyramidal
form a prolific mine which sent sixty tons of argentiferous galena
forms reminiscent of some wulfenite, associated with cerussite and
656 The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012
Figures 8 and 9. Stock certificates for the Heazle-
wood mine (1888), type locality for crocoite, and the
Adelaide Proprietary Mining Company (1890).
Figure 10. The cover of Wilberton Tilley’s 1891
guidebook, The Wild West of Tasmania: Being
a Description of the Silver Fields of Zeehan and
Dundas.
ore per day to the smelters (Lancaster, 1977). Fine “straw” cerus-
site and anglesite specimens were recovered, but apparently little
or no crocoite; ore mining ceased in 1907 (Howard, 2009), and
Michael Phelan’s efforts to find specimens in the mines during
the 1970s were largely fruitless (Bottrill et al., 2006). No later
specimen-mining appears to have taken place, and Lancaster (1977)
reported of Comet-Maestries that “today the shaft is flooded and
a creek flows through the main adit.” Similarly, the Andersons,
Bonanza, Kosminsky and South Comet mines are quiet today:
all produced crocoite ore and specimens in the 1890s, and all have
been intermittently tried as specimen mines, but any specimens
with firm documentation pegging them to these mines should be
regarded as rare “locality” pieces.
The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012 657
Figure 11. Colorized crystal drawings of crocoite from Dundas, Tasmania. After Palache (1896) (top right), Van
Name (1902) and Slavik (1904) (bottom right). The crystal Palache described in January 1896 came from the
Adelaide mine “some time since,” presumably around 1894 or 1895, courtesy of Stephen A. Douglas, a 15-year-old
San Francisco collector who had obtained a number of specimens. The six crystals that Van Name described in
February 1902 were purchased by Yale University from the A. E. Foote Company, from stock obtained from the
Adelaide mine as well; the habits are more typical than that of the Palache crystal. Slavik (1904) said his crystal
was from the same locality as the Palache and Van Name crystals. Van Name wrote: “These Tasmanian crystals
of crocoite, with their superb color, high luster, and remarkably perfect crystallization, are most beautiful natural
objects, scarcely surpassed by crystals of any other known mineral.”
The gossan outcrop of the Red Lead mine, on the southeastern in 1991 yielded thousands of specimens, the best of them showing
spur of Stichtite Hill, was discovered in 1890, and the mine was bright red crocoite crystals to several centimeters on matrix pieces
worked for ore during the decade that followed: a notice in an 1894 to 30 cm across (Sielecki, 1992). In contrast to the typically hol-
edition of the Zeehan and Dundas Herald described a spectacular low crocoite crystals of the Adelaide mine, most Red Lead crocoite
expanse of crocoite in the roof of the main adit (Bottrill et al., 2006). crystals are solid, and translucent to transparent crystals are more
The mine closed briefly, then was revived in 1902, around which common in the Red Lead than in the Adelaide mine. The crystal
time crocoite crystals to 10 cm were noted. But the mine was closed masses and jackstraw clusters are found on mottled brown/black
again in the mid-1920s and lay idle until the mid-1970s, when a matrix of ferromanganese oxides, occasionally with microcrystals
succession of specimen miners including Frank Mihajlowits (“Mr. of cerussite, anglesite, petterdite and reynoldsite and with poorly
Crocoite”—see below) and Michael Phelan turned their attentions crystallized dundasite, grimaldiite and philipsbornite. Shane Dohnt
to the old workings and were rewarded with several small finds. is continuing to seek crocoite specimens in the Red Lead mine.
Shane Dohnt purchased the Red Lead mine in 1986 (Bottrill et al.,
2006), and major discoveries followed. A “large lot of very fine ADELAIDE MINE
specimens” of Red Lead crocoite was marketed at the 1988 Denver Of the mines in the Dundas field, the Adelaide mine is the most
and 1989 Tucson shows (Robinson and King, 1989), and a strike late prolific source of superb crocoite specimens, historically as well as
658 The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012
Figure 12. Crocoite crystal
cluster, 24.5 cm, from the
Red Lead mine. Olivier
collection; Jeff Scovil
photo (1998).
Figure 13. Crocoite crystal
cluster, 13 cm, from the Red
Lead mine. Olivier collection;
Jeff Scovil photo (1998).
currently. The mine is situated at the junction of Comet Creek and ferent directions. The second level down was the only one which
Adelaide Creek, near the base of a spur of Stichtite Hill about 2 km actually went back below the current workings. On this level they
southeast of the original Dundas townsite. It was first claimed by hit a cavity filled with clay and crocoite—and a flow of water so
T. Anderson in 1890, and sold the following year to the Adelaide severe that they had to seal up the level.
Proprietary Silver Mining Company. Mining began on three lodes Little ore of economic value was found during this early period,
(known collectively as the Adelaide mine), and by 1893 a number however, and the mine was shut down in 1895. While the mine sat
of adits had been driven into the hillside and a 176-foot shaft had idle in 1895–1901, a professional mineral collector moved in and
been sunk. There were seven levels driven off the shaft in all dif- dug for crocoite specimens (see below). In 1908 new owners took
The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012 659
crystals. Following this great strike, several months of fruitless
and expensive tunneling forced an abandonment of the work,
at a depth of 232 feet, closing the most extensive mining ever
done solely for scientific mineral specimens.
Shortly after Foote began offering specimens from the find,
New York mineral dealer Roy Hopping also obtained specimens
and offered them in the August 1898 issue of The Mineral Col-
lector, writing:
Crocoite from Tasmania: Among the many new arrivals from
various localities recently received the most important is a small
shipment of a dozen fine cabinet specimens of the beautiful,
rare crimson chromate of lead CROCOITE from the silver-lead
mines of Tasmania.
In September 1898 Hopping received another shipment, advertis-
ing over 20 small crystal groups at 50c, 75c, $1.00 and $2.00. And
yet another shipment arrived in December 1898.
Figure 14. Crocoite thumbnail-size crystal
cluster, 2.6 cm, from the Dundas Extended
mine. Martin Rosser collection; Jeff Scovil
photo (1995).
over and opened the 220-foot level, where commercial grades of
lead-silver ore were finally found. By the time the mine closed again
in 1915, 1,479 tons of lead and 147,000 ounces of silver had been
recovered, as well as nearly 3,000 tons of gossan rich in silver and
lead that was used as flux for the Zeehan smelters.
Crocoite was common in the gossan, but open pockets yielded the
best specimens. Brilliant, hollow, long-prismatic crocoite crystals
to 15 cm emerged in the days of ore mining, and during the years
1898 to 1901 the Adelaide became briefly a “specimen mine” when
field collectors found a crocoite bonanza. Philadelphia mineral dealer
Warren Foote, manager of the Dr. A. E. Foote company, first began
advertising the crocoite specimens in the May 1898 issue of The
Mineral Collector, saying: “No low priced specimens. But good
ones are cheap at $5 to $8 each. A great investment for collectors
who are on the lookout for something startling. They are sensational.
Ask those who have seen them.” Foote reported as follows in a
company catalog of 1898:
The discovery of new forms of this wonderful mineral is the
result of over a year’s work of our collector, in which the old
Siberian specimens were totally outclassed. The various Tas-
manian mines yielding the chromate of lead have been aban-
doned for some years and offered no hope of specimens in the
future, the water in the levels having ruined all the specimens
Figure 15. Crocoite crystals illustrated in the
in the porous rock. The surface indications at the Adelaide
November 1898 catalog of New York mineral
appeared to warrant operations, and a tunnel was driven into
dealer Roy Hopping. These are doubtlessly from
the Hill above. After much expensive labor a number of fine,
the same find as that marketed by the A. E. Foote
rich colored crystals on dark gangue were found, and a good
company in 1898. “During the summer,” wrote
supply of pure massive Crocoite saved. Further on, however, in
Hopping, “we received two small shipments of
a clayey deposit, our collector was fortunate to strike a patch
this exceeding rare and beautiful mineral from
of loose prisms 3–9 cm long, superbly terminated, and of a
the Dundas locality and can offer small groups
most gorgeous translucent to transparent scarlet-red. The planes
very cheap, mounted, at 50c, 75c, $1.00. A few
are exceptionally brilliant, and the angles of ideal sharpness
large groups, fine crystals, $2.00 to $500 [prob-
and perfection. . . . Only a few perfect crystals were saved as
ably a misprint for $5.00].”
compared with the number of broken, but otherwise choice
660 The Mineralogical Record, volume 43, November–December, 2012