Additions to Mineralogical Museum

The University Mineralogical Museum has recently received two very interesting and valuable additions. A friend has given the Museum a huge amethyst which is crystallized in about five hundred hexahedral prisms. This stone, which is remarkable for its size and dark purple color, was found in Minas Geraes, Brazil.

The Museum has also received a large case of specimens of economic mineralogy. This collection includes samples of many articles of trade which are made from the earth. There are samples of asbestos, both in the commercial form and as it appears in the rocks. Carborundum is shown beside samples of quartz and coke, from which it is made.

The most interesting of these collections is the case of graphite and clay in their crude forms. Here are shown the various stages in the manufacture of lead pencils, graphite, electrodes and lubricants. The materials are also displayed which illustrate the manufacture of the Welsbach light. Samples of the lighting fluid and the mantle dip, which renders the mantle incandescent, are shown, beside the cotton webbing in the mantle form before it is dipped in the solution of light-giving oxides.

The different stages of manufacture of the glower of the Nernst electric incandescent light is in the next case, together with specimens of the crude rock form and the commercial form of zirconium aluminum, salt, and cryolite.