UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PUBLICATIONS 



BULLETIN OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



SCIENTIFIC SECTION 



Vol. I, No. 8, pp. 223-230 January, 1912 



AN UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE OF THE MINERAL EVANSITE.* 



JOHN SHARSHALL GRASTY. 



The mineral evansite is reported as occurring at so few localities and is 

 so rarely seen that it will be of interest to know something about it and to 

 learn, furthermore, that at last it has been found in America. Until 

 recent years the only known occurrence anywhere in the world was that 

 found in 1885 near Zsetcnik, Hungary, by Brooke Evans of Birmingham, 

 England. Subsequently a mineral identified as evansite was found in the 

 Yoredale Rocks, RatcHffe Wood, Macclesfield, and described by A. S. Wood- 

 wardf in 1883. It is thus seen to be one of the very rare minerals. 



The next discover_y of evansite was made by the writer himself while 

 ill charge of some exploratory work in the Coosa coal field of Alabama, 

 where he was assisted by Dr. T. Poole Maynard, now with the Georgia 

 Geological Survey. Specimens of the mineral collected by Dr. Maynard 

 and the writer were given to Mr. Charles Catlett, j who published recentlj^ 

 a brief paper on its occurrence as an impurity in coal. Mr. Catlett also 

 sent one of the specimens presented to him to the U. S. Geological Survey. 

 As a result, a brief statement about it was printed in one of the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey bulletins.! The same bulletin contained a description of 

 the evansite found at another American locality, namely, in Idaho. But, 

 with regard to the Alabama occurrence, it was neither described definitely 

 with reference to location nor as to the character of the coal bed in which it 

 wasfound. It is important, therefore, that these facts be properly recorded. 



*Read before the Scientific Section, February 5, 1912. 

 t Mining Magazine, vol. 5, p. 333. 

 X Bull. 59, A. I. M. E., 1911. 

 § U. S. G. S. Bull. 490. 



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