Shore
railroad. The old diggings at Little Falls have been worked so
extensively that the highway has been encroached upon, thus partly
preventing further digging. There crystals are in demand all over the .
United States, several men being required to dig nearly all the time to
supply the demand from all quarters. At Diamond point and Diamond
island, Lake George, the same crystals occur as in Herkimer county, and
are extensively sold there.
Some
of the most magnificent known groups of quartz were formerly obtained
at the Ellenville lead mines, Ulster county, New York, some of the
finest of which are now at the American Museum of Natural History, New
York City. Few, if any, of these were used for gem purposes, although
many were sold as souvenirs at the locality over twenty years ago. The
Sterling mine at Antwerp, New York, furnishes small, fine,
doubly-terminated dodecahedral crystals, and the same forms, slightly
different, are also found in the specular iron at Fowler, Herman, and
Edwards, Saint Lawrence county; Diamond hill, Lansingburg, is an old
but poor locality, and Diamond island, Portland harbor, Maine, is well
known for the small but bright crystals found there.
Dr. Genth, in ;'
Preliminary Mineralogy of Pennsylvania," mentions crystals from 1-1/2
to 3 inches across, short and thick, but with clear pyramid, from
Nazareth, Northampton county, Pennsylvania; also fine crystals, 1-1/2
inches long and wide, from Crystal springs, on Blue mountain, in
Bushkill township.
The
highly modified crystals from Diamond Hill and Cumberland Hill, Rhode
Island, also the fine ones from White Plains and Stony Point, Alexander
county, and from Catawba and Burke counties, North Carolina, are
worthy of mention, and lately formed the subject of a crystal-lographic
memoir by Prof. Gerhard vom Rath.
The San Francisco Bulletin of
July 16,1884, mentions the finding of a large deposit of crystal or
pebble stones on the Santa Margarita rancho, San Diego county,
California, special reference being made to one specimen of pure
crystal 8 inches in diameter.
Mention
is made by Dr. Daniel G. Britton(a) in a paper on the folk lore of
Yucatan, in quoting the language of Garcia that the natives were
converted from Pagan idolaters to Christian idolaters, and speaking of
the belief in witchcraft and sorcery among them, that the wise men
divine with a rock crystal and that it has great influence over their
crops. Their occurrence in the mounds of Arkansas, North Carolina, and
elsewhere, and the abrasion of the crystalline edges, would lead to the
inference that they weie not collected only to bury with the dead, but
that they were carried by the natives for a long time to produce
certain influences, and having been used for such purposes were
probably buried with them as their property. Personal observa-. tion in
Garland and Montgomery counties, Arkansas, carried on at times 40 miles
from the Crystal mountain locality, showed these crystals
a Folk Lore Journal, August, 1883.
