Locality: Wild Ammonoosuc River, Swiftwater, NH
Specimen Size: 5/8 inch square black construction paper with gold flakes to 1 mm.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer (1978)
Catalog No.: 252
Notes: This was my "haul" from about four hours of gold panning on a warm September Saturday. The family came, the kids played in the water, and we had a picnic lunch. It was my first attempt at gold panning.
Locality: Wild Ammonoosuc River, Swiftwater, NH
Specimen Size: 3/4 inch square black construction paper with gold flakes to 1 mm.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer
Catalog No.: 555
Notes: Another four hours of gold panning in the mid 1980's produced this batch of flakes.
Locality: Swain Brook pegmatite, Wentworth, NH
Specimen Size: 1.5 cm (complete) almandine crystal on feldspar matrix. A smaller garnet is attached to the backside.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer
Catalog No.: 782
Notes: This trapezohedral form is somewhat less common than the dodecahedral form.
The pale color of this crystal hinted at a possibility it might be the spessartine species. An EDS analysis showed it to be a manganese rich almandine garnet. The Mn content is significant, but insufficient to classify this as spessartine.
Locality: Rt 11 road cut, near Minge Cove, Alton, NH
Specimen Size: 3 cm partial sillimanite crystal, (upper middle) in 5.5 cm specimen. Matrix is quartz.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer (2011)
Catalog No.: 1817
Notes: An aluminum silicate mineral was indicated by EDS analysis. Minerals with this chemistry include sillimanite, kyanite, and andalusite. The hardness tested as 7 to 7.5. This, combined with observed silky-fibrous texture in some areas suggests the species is sillimalite. However other zones within the two specimens collected are more bladed and blueish, suggesting kyanite. Deer, Howie & Zussman state in An Introduction to Rock Forming Minerals that "The polymorphic transition of kyanite to sillimanite appears to be sluggish and local persistance of kyanite in the sillimanite zone of metamorphism is not uncommon." The appearance of this crystal suggests that it was undergoing such a polymorphic transition.
Locality: Rt 11 road cut, near Minge Cove, Alton, NH
Specimen Size: 8 cm specimen with with kyanite-sillimanite crystal zoning. Matrix is biotite gneiss.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer (2011)
Catalog No.: 1818
Notes: Zoom view of bottom side shows gray, un-altered sillimanite, top left, blueish kyanite to right.
These Alton specimens are the only examples the author has seen of New Hampshire sillimanite-kyanite zoned crystals.
Locality: Madison Lead Mine, Madison, NH
Specimen Size: 0.1 mm steep bipyramidal wulfenite crystal on quartz crystal with green pyromorphite
Field Collected: Bob Janules, ex Vince Valade
Catalog No.: u437
Notes: These wulfenite crystals are VERY tiny, and are at the limit of what my photo equipment can capture. This wulfenite specimen is the only one known to the author from the Madison Mine. There are two wulfenite crystals on this piece.
Locality: Madison Lead Mine, Madison, NH
Specimen Size: 0.1 mm steep bipyramidal wulfenite crystal with green pyromorphite
Field Collected: Bob Janules, ex Vince Valade
Catalog No.: u437
Notes: The second wulfenite crystal on specimen u437.
Locality: Madison Lead Mine, Madison, NH
Specimen Size: 3.5 cm host specimen for wulfenite crystals.
Field Collected: Bob Janules, ex Vince Valade
Catalog No.: u437
Notes: The two tiny wulfenite crystals are near the top edge of this specimen. They are not visible in this image. The surface of this specimen is covered with a druze of milky quartz crystals and bands of brilliant green pyromorphite.
Locality: Madison Lead Mine, Madison, NH
Specimen Size: 2 mm spray of pyromorphite crystals
Field Collected: Bob Janules, ex Vince Valade
Catalog No.: u437
Notes: A view of the pyromorphite on specimen u437, that has wulfenite. Most of the pyromorphite crystals on this specimen are pretty dinged up, perhaps as a result of having formed in a very thin quartz seam.