432 Hidden — Mineral Research in Llano County, Texas. 



inch thick. The fergusonite was of the purest kind and 

 almost transparent, and somewhat resembled the famous Span- 

 ish sphalerite. 



Oyrtolite. — Many hundred pounds were found and in great 

 variety of form and color. All kinds of it gave good radio- 

 graphs after twenty-four hours exposure. Plates of it as large 

 as one's hand, covered on one side with curved crystals, were 

 not rare. It sometimes encrusted large quartz crystals to the 

 depth of one inch, having radiate structure, and thus aiforded 

 a new feature for this mineral and one very uncharacteristic 

 of zircon. 



■ 



Radial Lines from the Ore Masses. — As early as December 

 of 1902, my attention was attracted to the strange occurrence 

 of unusually long radial lines projecting in many directions 

 from the bodies of ore richest in thorium, uranium and zirco- 

 nium. 1 then named these occurrences "stars" and eagerly 

 sought for them, as positive " pointers " to ore. At last I 

 was obliged to give these " stars " more than passing attention 

 and here state the reason : While removing, piece by piece, a 

 seventy-pound mass of mixed zirconium-yttrium-uranium and 

 thorium ore, which was a nucleus to one of the best marked 

 of these " stars " (see fig. 4) from its quartz matrix, my hands 

 and face would begin to burn as if from the effect of strong 



