i6o The American Naturalist. [March, 
Rare Minerals. — The interesting zeolite beaumontite which 
has heretofore been known only at Baltimore has lately been 
discovered by Schmidt' in the vacuoles of a pitchstone from 
Sweden (Mien See.) The mineral has the same habit as the 
Baltimore crystals. Its double refraction is weak and its opti- 
cal angle large. The plane of its optical axes is normal to 
00 P<» and parallel to the edge which this plane makes with oP. 
Schmidt can see no reason for regarding the mineral as any- 
thing more than a variety of heulandite. — Mr. Hanks^ has given 
us an account of the occurrence of the rare mineral Hanksite 
from the vicinity of Borax Lake, San Bernardino Co., Cal. 
The best crystals have been obtained from a stratum of clay 
and sand underlying a two foot thick surface-layer of salt and 
thenardite, and from a second stratum of the same materials at 
seventy feet below the surface. These crystals are bounded 
by the planes oP, o) P, P, and 2P. When the basal plane is 
largely developed the crystals become hexagonal plates or col- 
umns. They vary in size from half an inch or less to three 
inches in diameter. Hanksite is known to occur also in the 
borax fields of Death Valley, Inyo Co., Cal, and at several lo- 
calities in Nevada. — Recent investigations on the bertrandite 
from a pegmatite vein at Pisek, Bohemia, yield Scharizer' re- 
sults dilifering slightly from those of Bertrand and Des Cloi- 
zeaux, who thought the mineral orthorhombic. Scharizer's 
measurements show it to be monoclinic with B=90^ 28' 34" 
and^: b\ c=z\.yygT,: i: 1.07505. 
New Books.— In the " First Report of Progress of 
THE Geological and Mineralogical Survey of 
Texas, "^ State Geologist Dumble gives a resume of the rocks 
and minerals of economic importance existing within the 
boundaries of the State. Natural gas, petroleum, salt and coal 
are known to occur in large quantity within the boundaries of 
Texas, but the limits of the formations containing them have 
not yet been carefully mapped. — " A Course of Mineral- 
ogy FOR Young People,'" is a little pamphlet of sixteen 
pages which accompanies a collection of twenty-five common 
minerals. It is intended to aid young people in the determi- 
nation of the most common minerals by teaching them to ob- 
serve for themselves their most prominent characteristics. The 
iZeits. J. Kryst. xv. p. 573. 
*Amer. Jour. Sci. 1889. Jan. p. 63. 
»Zeits. f. Kryst. xiv. p. 17. 
^Austin. State Printing Office. 1889. 
«By G. Guttenberg, Erie, Pa. 
