and tin*; some pieces bear an exceeding high polish, but very soft upon the surface, and may be scratched with a nail or file. Some naturalists ascribe the reason of the beauty of the shades and colours, to arise from a decaying quality in the stone; however that be, it has been turned to no other use than specimens for the cabinets of the curious, and inlaying snuff-boxes; but if a proper quarry be found in Labrador, we shall have chimney-pieces of it, which will go beyond any thing the world has ever seen, as to beauty and elegance. The highest price any single specimen has as yet sold for, is twenty pounds; but a much finer could now be purchased for half the money.

"John Jeans, the Scotish fossilist, lately discovered a spar very similar and much resembling the Labrador, in the shire of Aberdeen; but it only displays one colour, that is the gold tinge, and is of a much softer consistency; one of the finest specimens of which is to be found in Lord Gardenstone's cabinet of precious stones. This stone is arranged in parallel strata, which appear in certain lights to be of a greenish semi-transparency, and white opake, like the onyx, alternately; in other lights, there are seen light tints

of a brilliant golden hue, with some very small spots like mica."*

HYPONOME I.

Noble Labrador, or opaline felspar.

Micronome 1. Norwegian blue.

Description.

NOME VIII. KOLLANITE.

This rock, which, if not the first, ranks among the first in beauty, consists of round or oval pebbles, or rather crystals, of various colours, in a siliceous cement, sometimes approaching to transparent quartz, at others itself a bricia of minute fragments or crystals. The most common colour of the pebbles is grey, followed by the brown, black, dark blue; the more beautiful, yellow and red; the rarest being the green. The cement is also of various colours, from the transparent quartz to the opake red; sometimes of a metallic yellow, perhaps from disseminated pyrites; at other times tinged with yellow or red

The letter is signed A. S. Bee, xv. 99. A few copies of the account of gems were thrown off separately, by Dr. Anderson, for his friends; they are very rare and valuable.

around particular pebbles, or in distinct parts, arising from the influence of the oxyd of iron.

This is the celebrated pudding-stone of Eng- Pudding-stone. land, so much in request in foreign countries; but this name commonly exciting a smile among the illiterate, and the appellation being since enlarged to a great number of glutenites, of a different nature and origin, forming entire chains of mountains (while this is confined to a very small district in England, and is found no where else in the world), it has been thought proper to distinguish it by the name of Kollanite; derived from the Greek*, denoting its appearance of being cemented together.

The pebbles also, which are inlaid in this Noble flint. beautiful substance, seldom belong to common flint; but to an intermediate kind, between flint and chalcedony, which, in the imperfection of the science, has not yet been characterised. Karsten, in his catalogue of Leske's collectiont, has mentioned, among the minerals of Poland,

* Koλλa cement: it is also used by Dioscorides, and others, for iron, which in the mineral kingdom forms an almost universal gluten. See Collini sur les Agates, p. 156.

In words from the Greek, the original and English K is preferred to the Latin and French C.

↑ ii. 471.

nine specimens of flint, chiefly yellow or spotted, which must greatly resemble to those in the Kollanite; and which, as he observes, approach exceedingly near to chalcedony. Many may also be said to be agatised; being disposed, like agate, in concentric lines of different tints and colours. It is indispensable that a new term be applied to this intermediate substance; and the Chalite. Greek name of Chalite is proposed, from the word for flint, but which has not yet appeared in mineralogy*.

To arrange these pebbles with common flints, would only occasion a confusion of ideas. They belong to an intermediate substance, between flint and agate, which indeed Haüy has arranged together, under the name of Quartz agate. That flint which is found near Paris, with the layers and beauty of an onyx, and that called menilite, might also be classed as different structures of this nobler kind of flint; which, as silex is from the Latin, might be sought, as before stated, in a higher source, the Greek, and denominated chalite. Like chalcedony or agate,

* Xa. The Hebrew, it is said, is chalamish. Readers versed in that language, may cnosult Deut. VIII. 15. Ps. cxiv. S. Is. v. 28. L. 7. Ezek. 111. 9.

to which it sometimes passes, according to Mr. Kirwan, it is often accidentally impregnated

with jasper.

These pebbles are often found detached, and of a particular beauty; which, wanting however the, delicacy of some agates, resembles that of a rustic girl when compared with the elegance of high life. Some present circles and shades of various tints of brown, approaching to the Egyptian pebbles; others, various concentric lines of yellow and brown, yellow red and black; and others display a centre of red or crimson, with concentric bands of yellow and olive green. There is also a rare kind called the zebra, from its regular black bands upon a white ground. If we believe Dr. Woodward*, who made a very large collection of English pebbles, fine agates have been found near Gaddesden, in Hertfordshire, one of the boundaries of the puddingstone; where have also recently been discovered some fine flints with purple illinitions, like landscapes, perhaps tinctured with manganeset. That industrious author informs us that the Kollanite is common about Berkhamstead, in Hert

• Nat. Hist. of English fossils.

+ Collini observes, p. 146, that agates are easily detached from the rock, because each is enveloped in iron ochre. This remark applies to many kollanites,

Detached

pebbles.