Description: in "trace amounts" pseudomorphed after argentite

Localities: Reported from at least48 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated prismatic

Colour: olive green

Description: Vein of crystals, originally enclosed in calcite, to about 1 cm, from a localized alteration of host amphibolite.

Habit: anhedral to subhedral elongated prisms

Colour: black to dark green

Description: Reported by Dale and Gregory as aegirine in 1911, the mineral found here has since been redefined as aegirine-augite.

Locality:Flatrock Quarry (Flat Rock Quarry; Crystal Mall), Waterford, New London County, Connecticut, USA - erroneously reported

Description: now equivalent to Davidite-(La)

Localities: Reported from at least237 localities in this region.

Habit: blocky, equant

Colour: white to pale gray

Fluorescence: lavender, magenta-pink

Description: Besides a major constituent of the pegmatite, crystals in small pockets reach up to about 2 cm, often in dense clusters, also as overgrowth on microcline on cleavelandite and psuedomorphous after muscovite in the wall zone.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Localities: Reported from at least21 localities in this region.

Habit: tabular prisms

Colour: white

Fluorescence: reddish magenta to lavender

Description: As irregular aggregates of small subhedral crystals, often in very aesthetic arrangements, and as veins 1/8 to ¼ inch wide and as much as 6 feet long.

Localities: Reported from at least22 localities in this region.

Habit: anhedral but in large cleavable masses

Colour: white to pale green

Description: Gemmy and in large cleavable masses.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated prisms

Colour: black, very dark brown

Description: Very sharp terminated crystals crystals, up to half an inch in diameter and five or six inches in length, accompany pink fluorite. Massive material also occurs, intergrown with quartz, bastnaesite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and white to greenish plagioclase (commonly stained brown). The allanite is not very radioactive and was identified by an x-ray diffraction test by Mary E. Mrose of the U. S. Geological Survey. She indicated that it gave an exceptionally clear pattern. It was obviously non-metamict, in keeping with its unaltered appearance and virtual lack of radioactivity. Note: Schooner misidentified these as staurolite in Zodac (1940).

Localities: Reported from at least18 localities in this region.

Colour: reddish

Description: Found by Dick Schooner. A segregation over a foot in diameter, it consisted mainly of reddish alleghanyite and pinkish kutnohorite, with accessories. Unfortunately, only a few specimens were saved.

Habit: pseudomorph after triphylite?

Description: From Januzzi (1994): "Alluaudite, collected and recently identified by the author as occurring at Branchville (confirmation by Kampf, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History), is evidently a pseudomorph after euhedral crystals of triphylite." Needs confirmation.

Localities: Reported from at least134 localities in this region.

Habit: trapezohedral

Colour: red to maroon

Description: Pocket crystals with finely striated faces can reach over 7 cm. Compositionally zoned, with up to about 0.2 mole fraction grossular, 0.15 mole fraction pyrope, and 0.05 mole fraction spessartine - more toward the crystals' cores.

Habit: Dodecahedral

Colour: Red, purple

Description: Color is not diagnostic for garnet species. Needs chemical analysis to confirm, pyrope is not confirmed in Connecticut and is unlikely because it is found mostly in Mg-rich deep crustal igneous rocks and as grains rather than crystals. These crystals are probably almandine, which is extremely common in schists, though they may have a significant Mg component. The term "rhodolite" refers originally a rose-red gem variety of pyrope. Current usage has extended the name to any pink garnet in the almandine-pyrope series with most of the occurrences in the almandine compositional field.

Habit: trapezohedral

Colour: dark maroon with black coating

Description: Crystals to 4 inches. Referred to by Schooner as spessartine, but most likely impure almandine based on XRF analyses of many other district pegmatitic garnets.

Description: Re-identified as montebrasite.

Localities: Reported from at least12 localities in this region.

Habit: fibrous

Colour: very pale green

Description: Included in a list of minerals with no details.

Localities: Reported from at least13 localities in this region.

Habit: trapezohedra

Colour: white

Description: good though generally small (~1 cm or less) crystals associated with prehnite, natrolite, micro heulandite

Localities: Reported from at least18 localities in this region.

Habit: tabular

Colour: red, brown, yellow

Description: Clear, sharp micro crystals.

Habit: elongated prismatic

Description: Former crystals to 9 cm pseudomorphed by very fine-grained kyanite and muscovite in quartz matrix. Found in a glacially transported rock near State Routes 8 and 63 (Interchange 26), the in-situ source rock is unknown. These pseudomorphs are rare and unusual, E. S. Dana reported similar pseudomorphs at the kyanite locality in Washington, Connecticut (aka, Judd's Bridge). Unaltered andalusite was historically reported only from Litchfield.

Habit: modified rhombic dodecahedrons

Colour: wine yellow

Description: "The Mill Rock garnets have a wine-yellow color, and a brilliant luster. The material available was much too scanty to admit of any chemical examination, but in view of their similarity of form and color, they may safely be referred to the variety topazolite." (Dana, 1877). They are a couple of mm across or less, associated with quartz.

Habit: rhombic dodecahedral, often in nearly parallel positions in rosettes

Colour: dark-brown to jet-black, occasionally yellowish-brown

Description: Rosettes reach to about 2 cm across.

Habit: modified rhombic dodecahedrons

Colour: wine yellow

Description: "The Mill Rock garnets have a wine-yellow color, and a brilliant luster. The material available was much too scanty to admit of any chemical examination, but in view of their similarity of form and color, they may safely be referred to the variety topazolite." (Dana, 1877). They are a couple of mm across or less, associated with quartz.

Localities: Reported from at least10 localities in this region.

Localities: Reported from at least27 localities in this region.

Habit: Cleavable masses, molds surrounded by later encrusting minerals

Colour: white to pale blue

Description: Extant crystals very rare in Conn. - nearly all were dissolved away and exist as platy to rectangular prismatic molds, but here there were "large pearly masses showing cleavage surfaces often 10 cm. or more broad. There is abundant evidence that anhydrite has been present in almost universal distribution, but it now remains undissolved only in the centers of the less pervious blocks of rock. Molds of anhydrite crystals varying from stout prisms to exceedingly thin sheets are abundant everywhere." Shannon (1920).

Habit: rhombohedral

Description: Typical small rhombs<1 cm. Uncertain in the reference if the crystals are true ankerite under the revised definition, or ferroan dolomite, or how to distinguish them from the much more common magnesite.

Habit: coatings

Colour: bright to pale green

Description: waxy, pale to bright green coatings on ore-bearing host rocks, particularly around bronze nickeline grains.

Localities: Reported from at least73 localities in this region.

Description: fka: biotite

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Description: The references provide no details, but anorthite is a component of the diabase dike exposed in the cut.

Localities: Reported from at least10 localities in this region.

Habit: prismatic

Colour: dark green

Description: As pure layers cm thick and as isolated to radial sprays of crystals to several cm long in a granular quartz-albite matrix.

Localities: Reported from at least22 localities in this region.

Localities: Reported from at least17 localities in this region.

Habit: tabular, in spherical aggregates

Colour: white to creamy

Description: Aggregates of tabular crystals can reach 3 to 4 cm. This habit is characteristic for this locality, other area trap rock quarries have bipyramidal crystals.

Localities: Reported from at least35 localities in this region.

Habit: flattened acicular prisms

Colour: colorless to white

Fluorescence: pale yellow-white under LW/MW/SW

Description: Excellent acicular sprays of clear crystals in small cavities on very rusty/earthy goethite in the cores of fault veins, crystals usually micro to 1.5 cm or so.

Description: reported by Dick Schooner, no details in the reference.

Localities: Reported from at least26 localities in this region.

Habit: massive, striated aggregates

Description: The arsenopyrite is not the Co-Ni ore, earlier references to and analyses of "danaite" are probably from confusion with the loellingite ore veins.

Habit: firbous

Colour: white

Description: Fairly thick, white, matted fibers of amphibole asbestos.

Habit: fibrous

Colour: white

Description: Fairly thick, white, matted fibers of amphibole or perhaps sepiolite.

Habit: micro radiating clusters, aggregates, druses

Colour: deep green, sky blue

Description: Henderson (1967) reports: deep green crystals of quite variable habit up to 0.5 mm in size. The terminal planes of single crystals were generally bright, while faces in the prism zone were rounded and striated (Fig. 3). It also occurred as radiating groups and in irregular aggregates, sometimes with a single larger crystal perched on top. Druses of atacamite on vesicles were common. It was most frequently found close to or on cuprite, but occasionally appeared to be on malachite.Identification was based on its solubility in dilute hydrochloric and nitric acids, a positive test for halogen, and negative tests for carbonate and sulfate. The atacamite showed parallel extinction and weak birefringence, the two together ruling our malachite, antlerite and brochantite. The mineral was distinguished from paratacamite by its crystal form.On occasion, crystals corresponding to atacamite were found but with a sky blue color. These may well be pseudomorphs of rosasite after atacamite.

Colour: gray

Description: Specimens of metasomatically altered natromontebrasite, collected at the Strickland quarry around 1950 by Charles Thomas, consist of gray augelite crystals intergrown with pink brazilianite, pink hydroxylapatite, and yellow lacroixite. Very little such material was preserved, and most of it was consumed in study at the U.S. Geological Survey. Natromontebrasite was discredited in 2007, being a mixture of montebrasite, lacroixite, and wardite.

Localities: Reported from at least13 localities in this region.

Description: Included in a list of minerals without details, but plausible for the geology.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Localities: Reported from at least26 localities in this region.

Habit: tabular, axe-head shaped

Colour: lavender-brown

Description: "Beautiful groups of tabular crystals, up to an inch across, were associated with prehnite and several other minerals in a small cavity in gneiss. The largest group was almost three inches long. Most of the crystals were colored green by inclusions of chlorite, but some were of a typical lavender-brown tint and quite gemmy. Pseudomorphs of chlorite after axinite were fairly abundant. This is the first reported occurrence of axinite in Connecticut." Schooner (1958)"Groups of simple axe-shaped crystals, up to two inches across, were embedded in loose chlorite, with some admixed clay. The crystals were of two types: lavender-brown, glassy, and without inclusions, and greenish, opaque, and thoroughly impregnated with the chlorite. Some of the smaller examples of the latter kind were pseudomorphs of chlorite after axinite. In all cases, there seemed to be two generations of axinite crystals, differing in size but not in habit. One large crystal had a number of smaller ones clustered on its surfaces." Schooner (1961)

Description: ??? Must be a mistake in the reference as this mineral is not known from any basalt exposure in the region.

Localities: Reported from at least16 localities in this region.

Habit: Tabular to tapered groups

Colour: Very dark blue

Description: Mostly massive, found in massive quartz with massive chalcocite, malachite, fluorite.

Localities: Reported from at least14 localities in this region.

Habit: blocky to wedge-shaped

Colour: black

Description: Crystals to a little over 1 cm, surfaces are mix of smooth and lustrous to rough textures. Commonly associated with prehnite, calcite and quartz.

Localities: Reported from at least40 localities in this region.

Description: Mostly massive to subhedral material, but good euhedral crystals can reach 1 dm and subparallel clusters can reach a meter. Large crystals tend to have transparent sections, smaller crystals translucent to opaque. Associated with drusy quartz, small isolated botryoidal malachite blebs or acicular sprays, rarer with blebs of copper sulfides, all on pinkish-red arkosic sandstone to conglomerate matrix. A partial, reddish coating may be present on many crystals.

Habit: thin, irregular plates

Colour: brown, reddish-brown to yellowish-tan

Description: Irregular thin plates, as much as two or three inches across and a half of an inch thick, are intimately associated with massive allanite, white to greenish plagioclase, pink to purple fluorite, chalcopyrite and pyrite. Some may be altered to gray lanthanite?

Habit: blades, needles, platey, massive, in hemispherical and 2-D radiating aggregates

Colour: white to pale green

Description: probably the best material for the species in Connecticut.

Habit: pseudomorphs after uraninite

Colour: yellow

Description: "A soft yellow pseudomorph after a uraninite crystal was X-rayed, and proved to be becquerelite." Schooner (circa 1980s).

Description: Listed as associated with rhabdophane but no site-specific details given.

Habit: stains and encrustations

Colour: dark green

Description: Very poorly crystallized in fracture fillings.

Localities: Reported from at least30 localities in this region.

Habit: Hemispherical aggregates and 2-dimensional sprays of radiating, acicular crystals

Colour: white

Localities: Reported from at least116 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated hexagonal prisms, terminated with pinacoids and partial pyramids {11bar21}

Colour: yellow, peach, pale green, pink overgrowths on pale green cores, aqua, colorless

Fluorescence: blue-white

Description: Crystals to 2 feet (60 cm) across have been found. Most typical are colorless to pale green or pink overgrowths on pale green cored ("reverse watermelon") crystals, usually less than 15 cm long. Commonly frozen in quartz and associated with fluorapatite, cleavelandite, elbaite. Pocket crystals rare.

Localities: Reported from at least19 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated hexagonal prisms with pinacoids

Colour: blue

Description: Typically rough masses or subhedral to euhedral hexagonal crystals in matrix. Gem material was common.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Habit: hexagonal prisms

Colour: colorless

Description: a gem quality flattened crystal 8 cm in diameter retained by Brack family.

Localities: Reported from at least14 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated prisms with partial or complete pyramidal terminations

Colour: yellow

Description: "Beryl occurs in the pegmatite in yellow (“golden”), green, and blue euhedral crystals. In the border zone they range in size from 1/32 to 1/34 inch in diameter and from 1/2 inch to 2 1/2 inches long. Crystals as much as 8 inches in length and 1 inch in diameter occur in the core-margin zone." Cameron et al (1954): USGS Prof Paper 255;"many crystals of golden beryl, sharp in form and of the finest gem quality. Indeed, this is one of the principal heliodor sources in North America. The Little collection, at Harvard University, contains some exceptionally fine clear golden crystals; they were obtained from masses of quartz, many years ago. Similar crystals are in various museums and private collections. Of late, several magnificent specimens of a different type have been recovered. Those are deeply etched, frosty-looking, greenish-golden gem crystals, from cavities along a fault (?) which runs through the lower end of the quarry. The Gallant collection includes a superb crystal, with round¬ed diamond-shaped etch-pits on virtually every surface. It is over two inches long." Schooner (1961).

Localities: Reported from at least11 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated hexagonal prisms, terminated with pinacoids and partial pyramids {11bar21}

Colour: pink, commonly with green cores

Description: Beryl crystals to 2 feet (60 cm) across have been found. Crystals usually less than 15 cm long. Color zoning in large crystals typically consists of colorless to rose externally, with pale green cores. Commonly frozen in quartz and associated with fluorapatite, cleavelandite, elbaite. Some pocket gem material.

Description: Reference includes a list of minerals reportedly found by Dick Schooner in a pegmatite in East Hampton, but with no supporting details.

Localities: Reported from at least60 localities in this region.

Habit: tabular

Colour: black

Description: Mostly as a component of the host metagabbro, but also as euhedral crystals in the open veins to about 1 cm.

Habit: encrustation

Colour: black

Description: "This is one of the manganese oxides identified as a component of the soft black alteration crusts on tephroite, etc."

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Habit: encrstation/pseudomorph after bismuthinite

Colour: green

Description: Alteration product associated with a roughly 1 cm crystalline mass of bismuthinite in albite/schorl matrix with associated bismutite (yellow).

Localities: Reported from at least24 localities in this region.

Habit: prismatic, platy masses

Colour: metallic gray

Description: Huff et al (1996): Bismuthinite “occurs intimately associated with minor pyrite in small veins in the pegmatite and in the quartz vein – thus providing the necessary elements for alteration into bright green bismutoferrite. This is the first confirmation of bismutoferrite in Connecticut.”As platy masses to striated crystals typically with green and yellow secondaries, in rust-stained pegmatite due to oxidation of associated pyrite.

Localities: Reported from at least25 localities in this region.

Description: Good quality specimens were reported by Dick Schooner in Betts (1999).

Habit: coatings

Colour: bright green

Description: Associated with bismuthiniite and pyrite, which weathered to form this mineral and associated rusty stains and goethite in proximal matrix.

Habit: anhedral

Colour: gray exterior, brown interior

Description: Very small grains to a couple of mm in matrix of albite, muscovite, quartz, elbaite. Analyzed in 2017 by Peter Cristofono and Tom Mortimer.

Habit: hexagonal

Colour: white

Description: Schooner (circa 1985) says: "When the Strickland quarry was last active, the author found a boulder of cleavelandite with a small vug of aggregated lustrous white hexagonal-looking crystals with calcite and a trace of lepidolite. It was many years before the mineral was recognized as being a mica! Its unusual X-ray pattern aroused some curiosity, and it was forwarded to Pete J. Dunn at the Smithsonian. He identified it as bityite, and made an analysis by electron microprobe."

Colour: shades of red

Description: Found as loose rocks in glacial till.

Localities: Reported from at least21 localities in this region.

Habit: typically dodecahedral, less commonly in cubes showing slight modifications. Most crystals are slightly to severely rounded.

Colour: dull black, with blue patina

Description: Most bornite from Bristol is massive vein material in layers and stringers throughout the vein system, and as rounded blebs in white calcite or on quartz matrix. Crystals rare and specimens not as prevalent as chalcocite.

Colour: pink

Description: Schooner (circa 1985) says: "A few masses of Strickland quarry natromontebrasite, from the pollucite zone in the middle eastern wall, halfway down, are composed of intergrown metasomatic or hydrothermal alterations. Pink brazilianite, containing a trace of Mn (analysis by the USGS), is associated with augelite, lacroixite, and hydroxylapatite. This mineral was collected by Charles Thomas, and studied by Mary E. Mrose. Ronald E. Januzzi had earlier collected material, on the old dumps, in which the brazilianite occurs as confused white aggregates, with hydroxylapatite and possibly morinite." Natromontebrasite was discredited in 2007, being a mixture of montebrasite, lacroixite, and wardite.

Description: Included in a list of minerals with no details.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Description: Occurs in Alpine clefts in the schist with anatase.

Colour: whitish green

Description: "Amianthusis sometimes nearly as fine as that of Corsica." (Robinson 1825). Uncertain if he was referring to brucite or byssolite.

Habit: cleavable masses

Colour: light pink

Description: When the author discovered a large lens of spessartine at the Jail Hill quarry, in the 1950s, a few good specimens of pink "rhodonite" were collected. Two different shades were associated differently, one with spessartine and calcite (or dolomite), the other with tephroite and pyrophanite. X-ray and spectrographic tests have shown the lighter pink mineral to be bustamite, and the darker one pyroxmangite. In some cases, bustamite is intimately intergrown with johannsenite (probably an exsolution product).

Habit: octahedron modified by dodecahedron, trapezohedron and hexahedron.

Colour: dark yellow green, brown, black

Description: Typically as micro-crystals but can reach 8mm, most easily found in the aplitic zone, but in the intermediate zone and core margin also. At least 4 crystals (tiny subhedral grains, 2 octahedral microcrystals and a single 21mm fragment) have been analyzed via SEM-EDS and in all cases the best match is calciomicrolite, with very little Na or Nb. Zones within the 21mm fragment were also analyzed and showed a Ca-Ta oxide with minor Nb (and no Na or Ti)...this could also be microlite, or perhaps calciotantite, which can occur as an inclusion in microlite.

Localities: Reported from at least161 localities in this region.

Habit: rhombohedral

Colour: yellow

Description: small, yellow, transparent xls of calcite which were nearly cubic in form (Bartsch, 1940).

Habit: Massive

Colour: Brown

Description: Masses in quartz veins.

Description: This was identified (at the University of Michigan) as a very minor component of "ore" from the manganese pod at the Jail Hill quarry in Haddam.

Localities: Reported from at least8 localities in this region.

Colour: dark brownish black

Description: good crystals to 1 cm, can be highly modified, lustrous, microcrystals in cleavelandite

Habit: Prismatic with wedge-shaped terminations

Colour: blue

Description: As thicker, isolated and typically terminated crystals than the similarly colored anhydrite. Can also be differentiated by SG.

Description: Reference includes a list of minerals reportedly found by Dick Schooner in a pegmatite in East Hampton, but with no supporting details.

Localities: Reported from at least16 localities in this region.

Description: Included in a list of minerals without details, but plausible for the geology.

Localities: Reported from at least23 localities in this region.

Localities: Reported from at least15 localities in this region.

Habit: rhombohedral

Colour: White, yellow to orange

Description: White and yellow crystals associated with pyrite, stilbite-Ca (or potentially stellerite), and calcite in brecciated schist.

Localities: Reported from at least16 localities in this region.

Habit: Orthorhombic crystals, many showing twinning. Some are heavily striated, often show a pseudohexagonal symmetry, and discoidal pseudohexagonal crystals are common. Tabular crystals also occur in abundance. Twinned crystals may be pseudohexagonal, or may b

Colour: metallic bluish-black

Description: Tabular to elongated, usually singly or multiply twinned crystals with a bluish, lustrous metallic luster when fresh, up to 2 or 3 cm long. Usually associated with scalenohedral calcite and/or milky quartz. Crystals gradually gain a black charcoal coating that is easily cleaned by placing them in an agitated alconox solution, which does not harm the crystals or associated minerals.

Localities: Reported from at least103 localities in this region.

Habit: tetrahedral

Colour: Brassy yellow to rainbow iridescence

Description: Typically massive and iridescent, rarely as crystals up to 2 cm or as "blister" habit.

Localities: Reported from at least73 localities in this region.

Description: Included in a list of minerals without details, but plausible for the geology.

Habit: prismatic

Colour: silvery gray-green

Description: Micaceous alteration of cordierite, the latter crystals up to 8 cm across but typically fragmented into sections along a relict basal cleavage. May not be from this town specifically as the geology is not quite right, noted mainly from Haddam or eastern Litchfield - which is close to Thomaston, which was once part of Plymouth.

Localities: Reported from at least8 localities in this region.

Description: Included in a list of minerals without details, but plausible for the geology.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Habit: Typically flat, striated, cyclic twins, sometimes fully 6-sided.

Colour: yellow-green, pale green

Description: First locality where it was foundin-situ. Intensely studied in the 19th century - crystal drawings are in Dana's System of Mineralogy and Goldschmidt's Atlas der Krystallformen. Shepard (1837) writes: "occurs in large distinct crystals, simple and compound (see fig. 136 of my Mineralogy) as well as massive". Crystals reached up to about 7.5 cm across, typically translucent but not gemmy.

Localities: Reported from at least19 localities in this region.

Habit: massive and waxy

Colour: blue-green, cyan

Description: Alteration of bornite, chalcopyrite and chalcocite.

Colour: apple green

Description: Found as loose rocks in glacial till.

Localities: Reported from at least8 localities in this region.

Habit: fibrous

Colour: pale green

Description: in veins cross-cutting lizardite

Habit: colloform with concentric layers

Colour: pale yellow-white

Description: Thin colloform crust on goethite with an associated opal-AN-like layer. In Januzzi (1994) the discoverer states, "Recent examination, by way of x-ray and semi-quantitative analysis uncovered a new species for the Scoville Ore Bed in Salisbury, Connecticut; the mineral churchite, a relatively inconspicuous species and confused (no doubt often) with rhabdophane and probably more common than realized. Florencite should be looked for when churchite occurs in a deposit of this type. A hyalite-like mineral evidently forming before churchite lies just beneath it (the specimen is in the author’s collection)-this species is very possibly evansite."

Description: According to an unconfirmed report by Schooner (circa 1980s), associated with arsenopyrite were "a few soft, transparent, gypsum-like plates" of claudetite.

Localities: Reported from at least24 localities in this region.

Habit: double cones applied base to base, curved to spherical aggregates of radiating plates

Colour: dark green to black

Description: Accessory in the marble or along contacts of cross-cutting veins with country rock, especially veins rich in calcite, albite and scapolite. In voids as micaceous aggregates up to 2 cm shaped like “double cones applied base to base” (Shepard, 1837) or generally spherical. Good albite and clinochlore crystals are found in small voids in these veins or where they formed in contact with chlorophane "in joints in marble in the bottom of the main pit, some narrow veins filled with a greenish black chlorite, which formed fine granular friable aggregates of small variously oriented crystals. Where free surfaces are present the chlorite exhibits the vermiform curved prismatic crystals commonly called helminthe forms. These free surfaces are usually coated with manganese oxide." (Shannon, 1921b). Called prochlorite in some old literature.

Colour: Deep green

Description: Filling small cavities, this mineral may actually be pumpellyite, which is now known to be common in the local traprock, but there were few quarries in that rock in 1920.

Habit: fine anhedral grains

Colour: dark green

Description: Forms fine-grained masses at the contact between the quartz mass and the host schist.

Localities: Reported from at least17 localities in this region.

Habit: acicular

Colour: gray-brown to green-brown

Description: Acicular crystals in voids in altered amphibolite, with white scapolite.

Habit: granular

Colour: pink

Description: Granular material in quartz, with calc-silicate minerals in the amphibolite. Clinozoisite is much more common than zoisite and more likely a mineral to occur in this metamorphic terrain.

Description: Microcrystals.

Localities: Reported from at least29 localities in this region.

Habit: crudely prismatic

Colour: black

Description: crude crystals with dull luster typically associated with or grown up against samarskite-(Y) crystals. In aggregates to about 8 cm, tiny euhedral crystals rare. Duller luster of the coarse, uneven fracture surface differentiates it from samarskite.

Localities: Reported from at least42 localities in this region.

Habit: flat, elongated prisms or subhedral masses

Colour: black, with iridescence

Description: Good prismatic crystals formed in quartz, also hand-sized subhedral masses with striations from neighboring muscovite. Januzzi (1976) reports that a beryl crystal with a large columbite crystal projecting from it was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The ID is generic, at least one crystal was tested using Raman spectroscopy and the best match is tantalite-(Fe) (see entry). A crystal formerly in the Bill Shelton collection has a specific gravity of 6.7, making it clearly a columbite species.

Habit: tabular

Colour: black with iridescence

Description: Subhedral crystals in pegmatite matrix.

Habit: rectangular prisms

Colour: dark reddish to reddish brown

Description: Columbite-tantalite crystals with reddish color and some translucency have been historically called tantalite-(Mn) without supporting analyses (even SG) but visually could equally be columbite-(Mn). Strong illumination is typically needed to see the color and translucency. Most are small (<1 cm) and embedded in matrix.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Description: "Incidentally, a magnificent columbite-tantalite crystal was also found in the pegmatite in 1974." Brunet (1978).

Localities: Reported from at least10 localities in this region.

Habit: micro-globular aggregates, masses, pseudomorphs after spodumene

Colour: pale yellow

Description: Typically as tiny spheres of crystal aggregates with K-rich albite, micas, elbaite, quartz, calcite, pyrite, fluorite, and bertrandite in cleavelandite of the mineralized intermediate plagioclase-quartz zone. Rare pseudomorphs of spodumene. Schooner (1955) says: "solid masses of bright yellow fine-grained material. Some pieces were seen to be as much as 4 or 5 inches thick, the mineral having occurred as a lining in a long cavity or series of cavities."

Localities: Reported from at least18 localities in this region.

Habit: pseudohexagonal prism, subhedral blocky to massive

Colour: violet, blue, pale green

Description: Shows good cleavage and typically gemmy, though some of it is altered to dull gray-green "fahlunite". "The iolite has frequently been procured here in tabular plates, several inches across; and is remarkable for the facility with which it admits of cleavage into still thinner layers. This separation is undoubtedly promoted by the presence of exceedingly thin plates of what seems to be mica. The crystals are but seldom possessed of well defined lateral planes, in consequence of the implantation upon them of mica, albite, tourmaline, and more rarely of tabular spar. When perfect, however, they are either regular hexagonal prisms, or else this form, modified by the replacement of its lateral edges. Their color is a rich dark blue, with an occasional inclination to green; the depth of the color, as is usual in this species, is enhanced by the inspection of the plates in a direction perpendicularly to their cleavage." Shepard (1841)"Many beautiful specimens of a clear blue color have been found and cut into gems, showing dichroism by transmitted light. Specimens of this mineral seen in the different collections and museums of this country, you will invariably see labeled from Haddam. The alterations of this mineral are met with here in large quantities." (Davis, 1901).

Localities: Reported from at least12 localities in this region.

Habit: hexagonal tabular

Colour: pale lavender

Description: A 2 cm, tabular, hexagonal crystal is present in a cabinet specimen of kyanite at Harvard that was part of Brace's large boulder.

Habit: hexagonal prisms

Colour: dark blue

Description: embedded in kyanite, vary in size from micro to megascopic.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Description: Schooner (1955) reports it "as microscopic crystals associated with bertrandite" found by Gunnar Bjareby. However, he does not mention it in any of his subsequent writings on the area.

Habit: radial groups of flattened crystals

Colour: greenish-brown to almost black

Description: A drab greenish-brown to almost black mineral, abundantly associated with grunerite, siderite, and marcasite, was identified as chamosite. Careful restudy of X-ray data indicates cronstedtite as a better fit.

Habit: botryoidal

Colour: black with blue tint

Localities: Reported from at least16 localities in this region.

Habit: acicular

Habit: prismatic

Colour: gray-bluish-black metallic

Description: Vajdak (1997): Cuprobismutite from Case Quarry, Portland, Middlesex County, Connecticut was found on several specimens self-collected by Russell C. Huff (Woodbury, CT) in 1995. The mineral occurs as prismatic crystals and blades a few mm long which is quite large for this rare mineral and is gray-bluish-black metallic. A very rare occurrence in pegmatite and a new mineral for Connecticut. It is associated with bismutoferrite which we have analyzed as a new mineral from there in 1995 and with yellow-green bismutite.

Habit: pseudomorphs after spodumene

Colour: white to pale gray

Description: oriented intergrowth of very fine-grained, elongated albite and muscovite. Grains are oriented perpendicular to the spodumene c axis and give a columnar, silky appearance to the inside of a fractured specimen. Crystals pseudomorphs after spodumene at Yale to 32 x 70 cm.

Localities: Reported from at least35 localities in this region.

Habit: complex prisms with chisel-point terminations

Colour: pale apple green

Description: Gas vesicles rich in crystals lining the walls were once abundant. Never found singly. Crystals can reach over 2.5 cm, larger ones typically transparent, smaller crystals translucent to opaque - grading to porcelaineous crusts. Excellent specimens in major museums.

Habit: subhedral

Colour: pitch black

Description: Small 1-2 cm obsidian-black subhedral crystals with red staining in adjacent rock.

Habit: coatings and micro globules

Colour: orange

Description: Orange coatings on triphylite, messelite, and other related phosphates

Habit: cubic

Colour: grey

Description: Single alluvial crystal 0.8mm

Habit: thin or 6-sided tables flattened parallel to the shorter diagonal

Colour: yellowish-white

Description: First reported by Shepard (1842) as euclase forming "thin, transparent, yellowish-white tabular crystals, lining cavities in a silvery white mica, and sometimes imbedded in a dark purple fluor" in the topaz veins. Later retracted and confirmed to be diaspore by Shepard (1851) and Dana (1851): H=7-7.5, SG=3.29, alumina 84.9%, water 15.1% and described as "thin or 6-sided tables flattened parallel to the shorter diagonal". May be more common than reported because who has really looked?

Habit: foliated crystalline masses, almost micaceous, radiating or stellated curved laminae

Colour: oil to olive green, dark to grass-green

Description: Intimately associated with quartz, eosphorite, triploidite and rhodochrosite

Localities: Reported from at least51 localities in this region.

Habit: flattened short to elongated prisms

Colour: white to very pale green

Fluorescence: light blue-gray under SW

Description: pseudomorphed by tremolite (originally called Canaanite)

Localities: Reported from at least32 localities in this region.

Habit: rhombohedral, some curved

Colour: white, pink, tan, brown if iron-rich

Description: Abundant as fault vein filling associated with barite, quartz, bitumen. Crystals usually drusy.

Localities: Reported from at least8 localities in this region.

Habit: elongated prismatic with trigonal terminations

Colour: black to very dark brown

Description: Short to elongated (along c axis) prisms with simple rhombohedral terminations, commonly doubly.Januzzi: (1994): "I was recently informed (Schooner, private communication) that outstanding tourmaline crystals were collected, at the Bierman Quarry, that were between 4-5 inches long and about 2½ inches in width. These dravites occurred, in an area of tourmaline bearing schist, bordering the pegmatite dike. Fine doubly terminated crystals of tourmaline occur in the mica schist in the immediate area of the pegmatite locality. The crystals show the typical hemihedral form with well developed rhombohedral terminations; more than the usual number of prismatic faces are present so that the characteristic vertical striations often seen on specimens of tourmaline are wanting in the well formed specimens."

Habit: acicular

Colour: bright blue

Description: A few concentrations of tiny acicular crystals in one specimen of coarse-grained albite/quartz/biotite gneiss matrix.

Localities: Reported from at least16 localities in this region.

Habit: Elongated trigonal prisms, antilogous pole terminated with rhombohedral pyramids {1bar11}, analgous pole dominated by a pedion.

Colour: prisms mostly green, blue-green, rarely pink. Terms. green, yellow, pink, blue, combinations

Description: Hundreds of crystals in some pockets, often "piercing" smoky quartz. Flawless crystals are rare; usually fractured. Large pocket crystals vary but are usually striated to silky, slender and elongated, from small needles up to 30 cm, but typically a few cm long. Color zoning is usually longitudinal, short and terminal in shades of green, pink, golden yellow and blue with up to 5 colors. Antilogous poles typically pale green, yellow, pink; analogous poles usually colorless, pale green, aqua. w/thin indigo cap, or sometimes with a narrow pale colored zone immediately beneath and parallel to the pedion. Tiny crystals may be any color throughout. Concentric “watermelon” zoning is not common. Some fragments of green prisms are overgrown by later pink zones. Also found frozen in matrix with beryl, fluorapatite, fluorite, muscovite, smoky quartz, lepidolite, microlite, columbite.

Description: Enstatite (sensu stricto) — [En 91.5] within xenolith, Wagneret al.,1979

Habit: mostly massive, rare prismatic crystals

Colour: pale pink, grayish-, bluish-, and yellowish-white, white

Description: Intimately associated with quartz, dickinsonite, triploidite and rhodochrosite. Pink, translucent, prismatic crystals to around 1 cm long show rough striae parallel to the long axis, associated with micro encrusting quartz and apatite.

Localities: Reported from at least62 localities in this region.

Habit: prismatic

Colour: yellow-green to dark green to black

Description: drusy crystals in fractures in gneiss, crystallized in two generations, an initial one with elongated, larger and darker crystals and a second one of much finer-grained, short and lighter colored crystals. The second generation coats the first and some other minerals like quartz.

Description: A completely unsubstantiated guess.

Habit: efflorescence

Description: Schooner (1958): "occurs very sparingly with pickeringite, in efflorescences on protected schist ledges in the cut above the Strickland Quarry. It is distinguished from pickeringite by its different taste… the same as that of artificial Epsom salt."

Habit: earthy incrustation or delicate needles

Colour: red

Description: Formed from the weathering of Co-rich loellingite. "Eugene Franckfort reported that the face of one lode, opened more than a century ago, was covered with, abundant erythrite crystals… as fine as any which he had seen in his native Europe." (Schooner 1958). "The Francfort mineral collection [at Wesleyan University] contains some excellent samples of erythrite from Bucks Shaft" (Gray 2005). It was common during the mining, but very scarce now.A small flake was tested in concentrated HCl and it turned the solution blue, indicating erythrite.

Colour: colorless

Description: Etched, elongated microcrystals with rhombic cross-section and wedge-shaped terminations. With secondary quartz and cookeite coating a pocket quartz.

Habit: pseudomorphous after spodumene

Colour: white to slightly greenish-white or pale gray

Fluorescence: red

Description: oriented intergrowth with very fine-grained, elongated albite. Grains are oriented perpendicular to the spodumene c axis and give an indistinct fibrous to columnar structure, this being always at right angles to the adjoining surface of the original mineral. Fractured surface typically has a frosty appearance.

Locality:Strickland Quarry, Strickland pegmatite, Collins Hill, Portland, Middlesex County, Connecticut, USA - erroneously reported

Description: Reference by Januzzi (1976) to this mineral being found by Schooner in "Portland" correlates only with a report by Schooner (circa 1985) from the Hale Quarry in Portland. Schooner makes no mention if it from Strickland in his various comprehensive publications, especially his last, Schooner (circa 1985).

Habit: pseudomorphs after cordierite

Colour: dull olive green

Description: "The pinite [later fahlunite] variety, though generally occurring in indeterminate shaped pieces, yet nevertheless is occasionally seen in forms of the same shape and regularity as the iolite, from which, however, it differs essentially in color and hardness. The peculiar tint affected by the pinite is a pale, bluish, chloride green. Its lustre is pearly, and not particularly shining, except in a few specimens, where the color approaches silver-white. Hardness 2.5. Laminae neither flexible nor elastic. "in rhombic prisms in great abundance at the Iolite locality, and desirable specimens are easily obtainable. Many of these specimens upon being broken show clear blue Iolite in the interior, from which mineral it, is derived as alteration." (Davis, 1901).

Habit: foliated to lamellar masses, radiating masses consisting of curved foliated or fibrous aggregations

Colour: white to pale straw-yellow

Description: One variety cccurs filling cavities in the reddingite, and covering the distinct crystals of this mineral. It is uniformly clear and transparent, and is highly lustrous, showing entire absence of even incipient alteration. It is generally foliated to lamellar, although sometimes of a somewhat radiated structure. A second variety occurs in masses of considerable size interpenetrated rather irregularly with quartz, and quite uniformly run through with thin seams and lines of a black manganesian mineral of not very clearly defined character. Typically friable to the touch and lacks something of the brilliant luster of the first variety, it also shows greater difference of structure, passing from the distinct crystals to the massive and radiated form. Also occurs in small particles in fillowite and in masses of some size immediately associated with eosphorite, triploidite, and dickinsonite.

Localities: Reported from at least8 localities in this region.

Description: sheared and altered

Localities: Reported from at least15 localities in this region.

Description: Taylor (1824) says "in regular crystals of an inch and a half in diameter" He doesnt give the species.

Localities: Reported from at least9 localities in this region.

Habit: pseudomorphs after bipyramidal scheelite

Colour: black to dark brown

Description: The only US locality for ferberite after scheelite crystals, with only about 8 other world-wide localities. First described by Silliman (1819-1822) but not recognized as pseudomorphic after scheelite for a few decades. Pseudomorph occurrence is locally restricted to the quartz/clinzoisite-rich contact between the amphibolite and marble at the upper mine pit, sometimes in small open spaces formed from the dissolution of calcite in that zone, and perhaps a nearby locality northeast of the "Burnett place" by Hobbs (1901). Occurs as anhedral lumps to euhedral crystals<1 to >10 cm, the latter size usually aggregates, in the amphibolite. Intermixed scheelite/ferberite partial replacement crystals are common. Some crystals reported with "spongy" texture, probably where tungstite formed and was weathered out. Typically called "wolframite" in most reports but Silliman's original wet chemical analysis shows it is what we now call ferberite and the use of the obsolete term "wolframite" should be abandoned. Januzzi (1994) confirms Silliman's Fe-dominant analysis: "Chemical analysis (Grand Junction Laboratory, Grand Junction, Colorado - Bauer) gave the following results: Tungsten 60.1%, Iron 17.8%, Manganese 0.21%.Non-fibrous material yielded 16.3% iron and 0.95% manganese."

Colour: brownish yellow

Description: reported by Januzzi (1976) as "a small, brownish yellow nodule in feldspar". No analysis reported, no other finds reported/confirmed.

Description: Details of the find needed.

Habit: lamellar or bladed

Colour: tan or green

Description: Reported by Dick Schooner as "Tirodite", reference below provides no details. An XRD analysis of a sample labeled "tirodite" from Dick Schooner's collection could not differentiate it from actinolite. However, Schooner (circa 1990) reports: "Tan or green tirodite, lamellar and bladed, was rather common at the Jail Hill quarry, usually with only spessartine or barite. Masses two inches across have been preserved. A few little silky-fibrous tufts proved to be tirodite, also. This material was studied at the University of Michigan." A dark green amphibole-rich Schooner specimen labeled as "tirodite" (photo 983892) was analysed via SEM-EDS by Micromounters New England in 2019 and was found to be ferro-actinolite (no Mn).

Colour: yellowish

Description: alteration of molybdenite (Schooner 1958)

Habit: anhedral

Colour: very dark green

Description: As sub-cm grains in amphibolite rock with frosty, fine-grained scapolite.

Habit: Slightly elongated prismatic

Colour: black

Description: Porphyroblasts in amphibole gneiss adjacent to the pegmatite, subhedral crystals to about 1 cm.

Habit: micaceous or foliated globules or coatings

Colour: very dark green to black

Description: A late forming, fine-grained, very dark green to black micaceous mineral forming tiny globules or coating other minerals in vesicles in basalt. An SEM-EDS analysis conducted in 2017 concluded the mineral is an Fe-Mg-Ca aluminosilicate. The complete absence of K rules out stilpnomelane, biotite, celadonite. The Ca is too low for pumpellyite or julgoldite. A mindat.org mineral search by chemistry found ferrosaponite as a good match, as are its physical properties and geoenvironment of formation. However, XRD is needed for confirmation.

Habit: granular aggregates, rare micro rhombohedra in tiny pockets

Colour: honey-yellow, wax-yellow, also yellowish to reddish-brown

Description: Reddingite is very commonly associated with fillowite, and in many cases it is not easy to distinguish the two minerals.

Localities: Reported from at least96 localities in this region.

Habit: short hexagonal prisms or tabular, terminated by pinacoids with modified edges

Colour: pale gray-green or rose pink to purple

Fluorescence: bright yellow

Description: Gray-green opaque crystals up to 2 cm common in quartz, albite, beryl, elbaite, lepidolite matrix. Translucent to clear crystals in pockets, either as stout hexagonal prisms or with a central fluorescent prism surrounded by tapered, non-fluorescent overgrowths up to a few cm across. Gray-green crystals show more forms than the rose pink to purple crystals.

Localities: Reported from at least6 localities in this region.

Habit: anhedral to stubby subhedral hexagons

Colour: grayish green to blue-green, white, pale blue

Fluorescence: yellow

Description: An old term that should be abandoned, see description under fluorapatite.

Localities: Reported from at least10 localities in this region.

Habit: tabular, in spherical aggregates