The vast commerce of Liverpool enables those resident in it to observe some very interesting mineralogical facts, though its position among the gently undulating hills of the New Red Sandstone deprives them of the opportunity of collecting indigenous minerals.

Having in the course of the past few years specially studied some of the chrysocolla ores imported there, I have been very much struck with the vast differences to be detected in most of their physical characters. These differences in fact are of such importance, as will be seen in the sequel, that I have thought it advisable to mention them to some of our ablest English mineralogists and at their request I have been tempted to insert a record of them in the pages of the Mineralogical Magazine.

My original account of the mineral which I called Mordenite, from having first obtained it in the trap of the bay of Fundy, at Morden, King's Co., N.S., is to be found in the Journal of the Chemical Society, t864. A quotation is made from this to show the peculiarity of the deposit I am about to describe, and a few additions are given respecting opinions expressed on the species, and on its supposed occurrence elsewhere, before taking up the account of the recent observations to which I desire to draw attention.

In No. V. of this Magazine (page 149) there appeared a paper on "Some new Minerals in the Collection of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow," in which I gave a description and analysis of a new Sulphide of Lead, Manganese, Iron, and Zinc, to which I gave the name of "Youngite." In a note to his abstract of the above paper for the Journal of the Chemical Society of January, 1878, Dr. Burghardt, expressed an opinion that the "Youngite" was only a mixture of Galena, Blende, Alabandite (Mn S), and Iron Pyrites; and consequently had no claim to be called a new mineral. Although my analyses agreed closely, and coincided with such a probable formula that there was little reason to doubt their accuracy, I am glad to be able to place the matter beyond dispute.

Some time since Capt. Marshall Hall called our attention to Arolla, in the Pennine Alps, as a locality interesting to mineralogists. I venture, then, to offer you a brief note on one-of its rocks, collected during a visit in the summer of 1875.

At the head of the Combe d' Arolla rises the grand mass of the Mount Colon, a truncate cone of precipitous rock, dominating the glaciers of Vuibez and Arolla, which, after sweeping down from the watershed of the Pennine chain, unite into one stream at its base. The highest point of its snowy cap is 12,264 feet above the sea. In the Swiss geological map the greater part of the mountain is coloured as gabbro, and the same rock forms a small peak near the head of the Otemma glacier on the S.W., and the S.W. flank of the Dents de Bertol to the N.E.

The chapters of this work purport to be chronicles of the present state of our knowledge of the mineralogy of the northern portion of the kingdom. The geognosy and lithology are treated of to such an extent only as, in the first place, to explain the position of the minerals ; and, in the second, to aid future investigators in their explorations.

In these chapters, in order to do full justice to the work of others, the authority for, and the original discoverer of every locality mentioned, will be quoted, wherever known.

The author, having attempted to visit every known mineral locality to the north of the Forth and Clyde, and having succeeded in this attempt with less than half-a-dozen exceptions, is able in most cases to authenticate, or the opposite, as the case may be, the statements of previous observers.

In a paper read before the Chemical Society I gave a detailed account of a curious reaction of Manganese salts, and showed that Manganese dioxide resembling pyrolusite could be obtained by the reaction. I have since made many samples, and have obtained nodules so like the natural mineral, that I thought that an account of the method might have some interest for mineralogists. When manganous nitrate is dissolved in strong nitric acid and warmed, and a few chips of potassic chlorate added, there is precipitated in the liquid black oxide of manganese in the form of flat plates which, when very thin, are of a beautiful purple, but when thicker are of a red colour. The whole of the manganese is precipitated in this form, but when the strength of the acid and the temperature are made to vary, the distribution of the plates may be changed.

One and all of the writers who notice the substance or substances which have received the trivial names of mountain cork and mountain leather, agree in placing them among the fibrous amphiboles, intermediate between asbestus and rock wood.

In a monograph of the hornblendes, lately published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I have indicated that the above view was probably incorrect ; and having, since that monograph was issued, obtained and analysed several specimens from other localities, I now propose to show that this is a substance distinct from amphibole, and from any any other known mineral.

This is a highly vitreous transparent reddish brown mineral, which occurs with quartz and rhodocrosite. Its H. is 3.5, and sp. gr. only 2.49.

When heated in a tube closed at one end it gives off water, but is otherwise unchanged. More strongly heated in platinum forceps it loses colour and very slightly fuses on the edges.

It is brittle, and has a highly conchoidal fracture. When digested with hydrochloric acid, oxide of manganese is dissolved out, and the silica which remains is perfectly colourless.

During this autumn I had the opportunity of examining several different batches of celestine which had been dug out of the foundations of houses in this neighbourhood. On analysing one specimen which I took to be blue celestine, barium was found to be present in considerable quantities ; I then made a more exact qualitative analysis but failed to detect calcium or any other metal. The mineral then obviously consists of a double sulphate of barium and strontium, and a mineral of that kind has been found by Thomson, and was called by him baryto-celestine. Baryto-celestine, so far as I can ascertain, has not, however, been previously found in the British Isles.

The following brief notes may be of some interest to students of Cornish Mineralogy.

1 st.—New Localities.

Scheelite.—This occurs as a partial replacement of Wolfram at East Pool Mine, where it was first noticed by Mr. Cornelius Beringer, of Redruth, an Associate Member of this Society. Hitherto it has only been found at Pengelly Croft, Huel Mandlin, and Levant Mine, in Cornwall, and at Huel Friendship, in Devon.

At the General Meeting of the Society held at the rooms of the Royal Microscopical Society, King's College, London, on March 14th, 1877, were exhibited some octahedral crystals of iron, which were procured from a hollow cavity in the middle of a bar of pig iron. The way in which they came into my possession was this.

A friend was walking on the Docks at Liverpool some years ago, watching a vessel being unloaded, which had arrived freighted with pig iron from Gartsherrie. These pigs were lifted by cranes, and one accidentally slipped, and dropped on to its end, and was fractured in two pieces, showing a cavity about the size of a duck's egg, and his attention was drawn to some bright lustrous objects which he saw roll out of the cavity. These he at once picked up, and found they were crystals of the metal, octahedral in shape, and about ⅗ of an inch in size.