Miscellaneous Notices of Mineral Localities, $c> 221 



some bits of copper, which had been secretly deposited there, 

 the day* previous, by some boys who had discovered the 

 place of their operations. It is astonishing how widely 

 these foolish whims concerning Kidd's money are dissemina- 

 ted among the ignorant in New England. 



We visited Blandford with a view to find the locality of an- 

 thophyllite, announced some time since by Mr. Shepard. But 

 we found no one there who could direct us to it. Upon 

 searching, however, we found the mineral, at first about 

 twenty rods southeast of the village, on the road to East 

 Granville, and afterwards more perfect specimens, about a 

 mile south of the village, on the same road. It differed, 

 however, so much in appearance from the mineral discovered 

 by Mr. Shepard, that I was led to doubt its identity, and 

 also whether it was anthophyllite. And this doubt was still 

 further increased, on subjecting a filament to the action of 

 the blowpipe, by which it was slightly, though with some dif- 

 ficulty, fused. In other respects it corresponds very well 

 with the descriptions of anthophyllite in the books ; its struc- 

 ture being foliated, its fracture uneven, its color some shade 

 of brown, and the aggregation of its fibres, or prisms, some- 

 what radiated. Not having a specimen of Norwegian an- 

 thophyllite for comparison, I gave some specimens to Mr. 

 Shepard, the results of whose examination are contained in 

 the following letter, which I think renders it nearly certain, 

 that the mineral in question is anthophyllite. The specimens 

 from Blandford and Chesterfield are so nearly alike, that the 

 one can hardly be distinguished from the other. 



"Vale College, Jan. 2, 1828. 



My dear sir-— In compliance with your desire, I have com- 

 pared the substance which you supposed might be antho- 

 phyllite with a genuine specimen from Norway. It possess- 

 ed the same crystallographical characters, affording by the 

 reflecting goniometer, angles of 1 25° 30' and 54* 30'. Before 

 the blowpipe their appearance was the same, although I was 

 able to fuse them both without difficulty upon the edges, 

 into a glass colored by iron, contrary to the characters given 

 in this respect in the books, which assert that, alone, before 

 the blowpipe, the anthophyllite is unalterable. 



The determination of this substance has led me to re-exa- 

 mine a mineral from the same neighborhood, of which I 

 gave some account in the Boston Journal, under the name of 

 anthophyllite. I find myself to have been in an error as to 



