1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 213 
Among later collectors is Mr. Wm. E. Hidden, to whom our 
list is indebted for a series of our rarest minerals. 
Mr. George F. Kunz has greatly helped in promoting the 
work among others, and to this end joined the author in taking 
steps for the formation of a mineralogical club. This society, 
formed in the spring of 1887, is in a state of gratifying prosper- 
ity, numbering nearly fifty members. 
Other late collectors are Dr. J. J. Friedrich, and Mr. Wm. 
Niven. The latter gentleman has met with gratifying success 
in the addition of a number of important specimens to our cata- 
logue. 
Mineral Localities in New York County. 
The first recorded locality resorted to by collectors was Cor- 
lear’s Hook, a mile or more out of the city. This has been 
described as a great deposit of diluvial sand, pebbles and bould- 
ers or ‘‘ alluvion,” topped by a series of conical hills, fifteen or 
twenty feet in diameter. The bed was very deep, shafts having 
been sunk seventy to one hundred and fifty feet before reaching 
bed rock. Here was found the largest number and variety of 
rocks on the island.* 
The largest boulder, some eighteen feet in length, came from 
the serpentine locality at Fifty-eighth Street, North River. From 
this was obtained asbestus and actinolite. Another boulder 
supplied epidote, carbonate of lime, indicolite, and an ore which 
was thought to contain nickel. Apatite and garnets were quite 
plentiful. One enterprising collector discovered odlite, another 
graphite, and another madrepore corals, fifty feet below the sur- 
face of the deposit. 
More venturesome expeditions resulted in the finding of stauro- 
lite three and one-half miles from the city, on the Hudson (now 
about Fortieth Street). At four and one-half miles (Fifty-eighth 
to Sixty-third Streets) was the anthophyllite locality, which has 
ever been to mineralogists a spot of peculiar interest. Prof. 
John Torrey sent a specimen of the radiated mineral to Dr. 
Thomson, of Glasgow, by whom it was analyzed and named 
hydrous anthophyllite. 
The gneiss quarries at Kip’s Bay and Turtle Bay, from about 
Thirty-eighth to Forty-fourth Streets, East River, have been 
which accompanied the engineer, consisting of instruments and rare 
minerals from the old-world mines, were sufficient to entice the lad into 
so fascinating a department of science. His taste, however, became 
dormant for many years, until revived on his removal to this city, where 
opportunity favored his former habit of rambling and research. 
1 Bruce’s Min. Journal, 1814. 
