CYANITE, EPIDOTE, TOURMALINE, SMARAGDITE, ETC. 55
gems
have been cut, and a fine example is in the United States National
Museum. It is, however, too soft to admit of much wear.
Another locality of fine cyanite in the same vicinity, was described in 1898 by Dr. J. H. Pratt.2
This was on the farm of Mr. T. Young, in Yancey County, on North Toe
River, a few miles from Spruce Pine, Mitchell County. Here the cyanite
is frequently of a rich mossy green color, sometimes perfectly
transparent; and some of the crystals are blue along the center with
grass-green margins. Many of them are terminated, which is not common
in cyanite; and the locality seems a very promising one.
EPIDOTE.
Prof. Frederick A. Genth mentions3
a crystal of epidote in the cabinet of the University of Pennsylvania,
from the gold-washings of Rutherford County, N. C. This crystal is
strongly pleochroic, like the so-called puscli-kinite from the
auriferous sands of Ekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains, and would cut
into a small gem. Some fine highly complex forms have been observed at
Hampton's, Yancey County, by William E. Hidden. These crystals might
possibly afford cabinet gems, not equal, however, to the Tyrolese
epidote. Handsome prismatic crystals, l-1/2 inches in length and 1/8 in
diameter, have been reported by Mr. 0. H. Blocher, of Old Fort,
McDowell Count}', as found some 40 miles from that place, but with no
more specific location. They are brilliant, but of too dark a green to
have much promise as gems.
Crocidolite
was observed by Joseph Wilcox in long, delicate fibers of a blue color,
in one of the western counties of North Carolina.
TOURMALINE.
This
is a complex boro-silicate of alumina and several oxides, which is
frequent in various crystalline rocks, and in its common black form is
found at numerous North Carolina localities. But the richly colored
varieties which are valued as gem stones, and are found in Maine,
ConÂnecticut, and Southern California, do not appear in North Carolina.
The only announcement of the presence of any of them, thus far, was
made several years ago by Messrs. D. C. Morgan and Company, of
Waynes-ville, Haywood County, who reported crystals of transparent
green tourmaline as found near that place. The colored tourmalines
usually contain some lithia, and are nearly always found, when they do
occur, in pegmatite dikes. As these latter are frequent in the western
counties,
