Notice of Minerals from New Holland. 163 



choidal fracture, disclosing in the centre of the mass, blood red 

 spots of jasper, and thus constitutes the heliotrope. There are 

 spots also of a lighter green, and bluish white chalcedony, inter- 

 spersed with the deeper ground, which, if polished, would render 

 the specimens highly ornamental in jewelry. 



Ribbon Agate and Moss Agate. — These two interesting vari- 

 eties appear in the same specimens. The brandling fibres or 

 dendrites of the latter, of a brown or reddish brown color, are 

 imbedded in a deep ground of transparent blue and white chal- 

 cedony, the white chalcedony appearing like a delicate cloud 

 passing through the mass, while the former is produced by paral- 

 lel zigzag lines of a pure milk white chalcedony, alternating 

 with narrow stripes of the same blue ground; — the parallelism 

 forming a beautiful border to the specimens, and enclosing the 

 curious moss-like ramifications which are characteristic of this 

 variety. In one specimen, the green chalcedony has assumed the 

 branching form, and is freely distributed through the same ground 

 of blue and white. If polished, these several varieties will vie 

 in beauty with the finest oriental specimens. They are usually 

 more or less accompanied by masses of pure opake white chalce- 

 dony, and also by a stalactical, botryoidal variety of several shades 

 of color, interspersed with quartz crystals, and attached to portions 

 of the trap. 



Cacholong. — This variety forms thin crusts upon the surfaces 

 of the fragments of quartz, and fills the space in which crystals 

 of the latter have been formed. It presents the common charac- 

 ters of opacity and adhesiveness to the tongue. It enters into the 

 composition of a coarse ribbon agate. 



ChlorophcBite. — Small globular masses, soft, of a greenish color, 

 translucent when first broken, and presenting a conchoidal frac- 

 ture, occupy the vesicular cavities of the same amygdaloid which 

 forms the gangue to the apophyllite before described. It is suffi- 

 ciently distinguished from chlorite or green earth, and precisely 

 resembles this mineral from Scotland. The opinion of most 

 mineralogists is, that this mineral is only a variety of some other 

 species, or the remains of some other, which has undergone decom- 

 position. I am led to regard the latter opinion as the true one in 

 the present case, from the occurrence of small granular concretions 

 of what appears to be zeolite in the centre of those masses which 

 have not entirely disappeared ; though the infusibility of the de- 



