In most mineralogical text-books the nepheline-syenite area of Alnö, on the east coast of Sweden, is given as one of the few localities of the rare mineral baddelyite, ZrO2. This information is based on a communication by E. Hussak, who claimed to have discovered the mineral in jacupirangitic varieties of the Alnö nepheline-syenites.

The present writer, being engaged with a petrological and mineralogical revision of the Alnö occurrence, earlier described by A. G. Högbom in his classic memoir of 1895, has in vain looked for the presence of baddelyite. Hussak claimed to have isolated by means of Klein's solution 0·38 gram of pure baddelyite from 100 grams of rock, as well as to have obtained characteristic ZrO2 crystals inn borax bead test. Repeated isolation tests with Clerici's solution on samples from various localities within the Alnö area, however, furnished nothing but residues of melanitic garnet.