342 Notice of Eremite. 



Alone before the blowpipe, it instantly becomes transparent and 

 colorless, but does not suffer the slightest fusion even in very thin 

 fragments. Heated with carbonate of soda on a platina support, an 

 opake white mass was obtained, stained in a single spot of a cinna- 

 mon brown color. With borax, it fused slowly, attended by a slight 

 effervescence, and yielded a transparent amber-yellow globule, 

 which by flaming became paler and milky in its clearness. Heated 

 with sulphuric acid in a glass tube, after pulverization, it sensibly cor- 

 roded the glass. It may therefore prove on more extended exami- 

 nation to be a fluo-titaniate, but of what base it is impossible to con- 

 jecture. 



For my specimens of the above mineral, I am indebted to Mr. 

 Thomas R. Dutton, a member of the senior class in Yale College. 

 He discovered it last autumn in the northeastern part of Watertown, 

 Conn, (on land of David Matoon,) engaged in a boulder of albitic 

 granite, four feet in diameter. Mr. Dutton noticed the crystal fig- 

 ured above (which is still in his possession) while breaking up the 

 mass for the purpose of obtaining black tourmaline, by which mine- 

 ral the boulder was more or less penetrated. The crystal weighs but 

 two grains, but is highly finished and perfect in its form, — all the 

 faces admitting of the use of the reflective goniometer, by means of 

 which instrument the angles quoted were obtained. 



Mr. Button has again visited the locality this spring, and care- 

 fully reduced a part of the rock to fragments, without however being 

 able to discover more than five or six extremely minute crystals, whose 

 form is not very distinct. Two of these were employed in the blow- 

 pipe experiments above described. The mineral appears to be im- 

 bedded in the quartz and is accompanied by apatite. 



As beds of this variety of albitic granite are common in the north 

 part of Waterbury, in Watertown, Plymouth, and indeed generally 

 throughout the mica-slate band skirting the frontier of the secondary 

 in a northeasterly direction quite to the Massachusetts line, it is 

 highly probable that other localities of this interesting substance will 

 ultimately be brought to light. 



The name bestowed upon the mineral is derived from sQj]fiLa, soli- 

 tude, in allusion to the isolated manner of its occurrence, with re- 

 spect to other individuals of the same species. Its properties ob- 

 viously bring it within my genus eruthrone-ore, and in consequence of 

 the replacement of both its longer and shorter terminal edges by 

 three planes each, thereby,giving rise to six prisms beside the prima- 

 ry, it may be designated systematically, polyprismatic eruthrone-ore. 



New Haven, May 21st, 1837. 



