1 6 Nature in Recreation 



Carefully chop or break away the surplus stone around the "important" 

 part of your specimen, then clean it with soap and water and a brush, unless 

 it is too fragile for brushing. Procure a mineral table and with your un- 

 glazed porcelain streak plate and by its other characteristics try to iden- 

 tify the stone. If you are not sure what it is, ask your teacher or the local 

 museum, sometimes the local scout troop can be a big help in identifying 

 stones and telling you of good prospecting ground. After you have iden- 

 tified the specimen give it a number, enter the number in your notebook 

 with all the information you have about the specimen; where you found it, 

 what it is, its chemical composition, what the matrix is, etc. Something 

 like this: 



108 Smoky Quartz xls and Biatite on Feldspar 



Perfect quartz xls biatite broken 



Found Sunday April 24, 1938 on a ridge one 



quarter mile south of the largest old 



Kensico Dam quarries. 



Mounting 



After you have cleaned and identified the specimen, the next problem is 

 how to store it. Of course you can wrap it up, put it in a box and hide it 

 away in a closet. It would be a shame to do that though after all the work 

 you have done to get it so we had better try to figure some way to make an 

 attractive display out of all the specimens and leave room for additions as 

 our collection grows. A visit to the museum will give you several ideas on 

 mounting minerals, and you will be able to work out something that suits 

 your own needs as regards space and the opinions of the rest of the family. 

 You can make or buy a chest of shallow drawers and put compartments in 

 them for each specimen, then put a little cotton batting in each compart- 

 ment to keep the specimens from being spoiled if the drawer is ever slammed 

 shut. If you can find a book shelf with glass doors, you can make a deluxe 

 mineral cabinet. Put smaller shelves in it built up like stairs and then mount 

 your specimens on pedestals, shallow trays, in small vials or numbers of 



