242 Lieut. Newbold on the Beryl Mine of Paddioor. 



with polarity. Manganese also occurs in the form of the black 

 oxide ; also garnets, corundum, magnesite, nephrite, asbestus, 

 chromate of iron, adularia, pyrites, &c. Rubies have been found 

 associated with the corundum which occurs imbedded in gneiss. 

 I am not aware that the other beautiful variety of rhomboidal 

 corundum, viz. the sapphire, has ever been discovered ; but, 

 from certain indications, I should be led to suppose its exist- 

 ence. Gold-dust is found in many of the rivulets flowing down 

 the sides of the Nilgherry and Salem Mountains. 



I will now proceed to describe the bed, and minerals with 

 which the Beryl is more immediately associated in the parti- 

 cular locality which has already been adverted to, viz. Paddioor. 

 The mine has been sunk through a bed or dyke in the gneiss 

 and mica-slate on the line of contact ; it is about eighteen 

 paces long, by fourteen broad ; it has about seven feet of water 

 covering the lower part, and is about twenty-four deep to the 

 surface of the water. The dyke is composed of a highly crys- 

 talline porphyritic granite, the component minerals of which 

 are generally beautifully characteristic and distinct. The quartz 

 is sometimes regularly crystallized, but usually in amorphous 

 translucent masses, imbedded in large tabular crystals of pale 

 rose-coloured felspar, with cleavlandite, garnet, and white, 

 black, and bottle-green mica. A crystallized pyramidal prism 

 of quartz that had been dug out of this mine measured 2 feet 

 3^ inches in length, and 1 foot 3 inches in diameter ; it had, 

 however, been fractured, and four only of the sides were tole- 

 rably perfect. The mica occurred both in six-sided tables and 

 in large irregularly-shaped nests, one of which measured 2 feet 

 in length ; the laminae highly elastic and transparent. A few 

 of the garnets were crystallized in dodecahedrons, sparingly 

 disseminated in the rock ; one of these crystals measured 2 

 inches in diameter. The crystals of cleavlandite were remark- 

 ably fine, and characteristic of this beautiful variety of felspar. 

 The various minerals composing this bed pass from the por- 

 phyritic structure into a curiously fibrous arrangement : the 

 quartz, felspar, and cleavlandite occurring in alternate prisma- 

 tic lamina? ; sections of this rock, at right angles with the long 

 axis of the prisms, exhibit on their surfaces the appearance of 

 graphic granite. Where this arrangement is observed, the 

 mica is partially and irregularly distributed in thin pyramidal 



