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PRECIOUS STONES. 695
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merely
copper stains. Ancient pottery which was unearthed made it probable
that the place had been abandoned for several hundred years.
Messrs.
Bell & Barber have opened what they term the Blue Gem mine and
Manitou mine, at Village Grove Post-Office, Colorado, 25 miles south of
Salida. All the turquoise found there up to the present time has been
of a fair blue color, but mostly Assured and veined with small dark
streaks. Few have been sold up to 1894.
George
M. Bowers, of Los Angeles, California, reports the discovery ot
turquoise on the side of Turquoise mountain, near Clingman, Arizona, 40
miles from the Colorado river.
Turquoise
is reported as occurring twelve miles from Hedi, King River District,
Victoria, Australia, where it is found in veins in a gray slaty rock.
The color is pale blue shading to dark green. Up to the present no fine
gems have reached the gem marts, but it is believed by the miners that
tbey will be obtained by deeper mining.
TOURMALINE.
At
the historic Mount Mica locality at Paris, Oxford county, Maine, some
work was carried on during the summer of 1893, resulting in the
discovery of a number of large green crystals, one of which furnished
one of the finest tourmaline gems ever found on this continent, being
of a clear grass-green color and weighing 63-1/2 carats. The total find
of minerals and gems at Mount Mica for the year 1893 amounted to the
value of $3,000. Among the crystals of tourmaline were some fine ones
tipped with red, while the shafts were green with a transverse band of
indigo blue at the middle portion.
Mr.
Charles Russell Orcutt announced a new and remarkable occurrence of
pink tourmaline in lepidolite, similar to that of Rumford, Maine, 12
miles south of Temecula, near San Luis Rey river, in San Diego county,
the southern county of California, and it has already become celebrated
from the abundance and beauty of the specimens yielded, as much as 20
tons having been sent East for sale. Through San Diego county runs the
Peninsula range, rising several thousand feet between the coast and the
Colorado desert. In these granite mountains are dioritic intrusions
and some inetamorphic schists, etc. West of the summit lies a parallel
belt of granitic rock characterized by dikes of pegmatite, in one of
the largest of which occurs this great deposit of lepidolite with
tourmaline. In Pala, a little west of Smith's mountain, in the
Peninsula range, San Diego county, California, a ledge of lepidolite
containing rubellite has been traced for over half a mile. It consists
of a coarse granite, penetrating a norite rock, and including masses of
pegmatite. Small garnets occur in the granite, and black tourmaline,
with a little green tourmaline.
The
lepidolite appears in the southern portion, finally forming a definite
vein which at one point is 20 yards wide. The rubellite is chiefly in
clusters and radiations, several inches in diameter, also occasionally
as
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