Locality: Road cut near the Manchester Armory site, Manchester, NH
Specimen Size: 5 cm specimen. Cream colored scapolite prisms in quartz.
Field Collected: Unknown
Catalog No.: 2037
Notes: This is a Phillip Morrill listed locality. A skarn was uncovered during work on a road cut near the Manchester Armory, 1939. The find (made by a Manchester high school student) was reported in the 1939 issue of Rocks and Minerals , pg. 349. This specimen was salvaged by Dana Morong from the UNH mineral collection "de-acquisition." This is only the third specimen I [tm] have seen from this site. The other two are in the Woodman Institute, Dover, NH, collection. As of 2017, these are the best examples of NH scapolite.
The number on specimen matches the number on label. The scapolite fluoresces rose color in SW UV and pale-mustard-yellow in LW UV.
A May 2017 EDS analysis clearly showed the meionite member of the meionite-marialite scapolite series.
Locality: Devil's Den Locality, Auburn, NH
Specimen Size: 3.5 cm specimen. Gray-white kyanite blade in iron-stained quartz.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer - 2017
Catalog No.: 2033
Notes: This is a Phillip Morrill listed locality.
Research on this locality by Peter Cristofono found; "the Devil's Den reference is pre-Hitchcock. I just found Devil's Den tremolite listed in Robinson (1825), A Catalogue of American Minerals and their Localities: 'Chester -- Tremolite, bladed and abundant, near the Devil's den.' (Auburn was part of Chester until 1845) -- Robinson also lists sulphur under Chester: 'Native sulphur, is found in small quantities, in tremolite.' Looking further, I found Robinson's source to be: John Farmer and Jacob B. Moore (1823), A Gazetteer of the State of New-Hampshire, p. 22. 'Tremolite---Chester, near the Devil's den, bladed and abundant.' In Jeremy Belknap's The History of New-Hampshire, Vol. 3 (1792), there is a description by Peter French of Devils' Den, p. 188. in which he describes stalactites, etc. and 'sulphur' and this is probably the source of Robinson's sulphur report. But French's description seems very exaggerated. I could not find a reference yet of any mining activity there."
Mindat has an old postcard photo of this locality: mindat.org Devil's Den photo . During my May 2017 visit to the locality, I captured the GPS coordinates as: 42 deg 59.390 min N, 71 deg 20.353 min W. This locality is just a leaf filled depression on the west side of Mine Hill, as shown in my 2017 photo here. I was able to poke the wooden pole end of my 4-prong "dump tool" about three feet into the leaf hummus in the depression floor. It would take great effort to excavate this to examine the bedrock below. Almost all of the rock on the small dump was a rusty micaeous schist, devoid of any interesting mineralization, last photo.
However a May 2017 attempted EDS confirmation of tremolite showed just an aluminum silicate! No Mg or Ca, so not tremolite. EDS cannot differentiate between kyanite, andalusite and sillimanite, but based on other NH occurances of this simple aluminun silicate in quartz, my first choice for this specimen is kyanite. So is tremolite really present at Devil's Den, or has this bladed mineral been long miss-identified as tremolite? I would like to hear from any collector who has or spots an Auburn, Devil's Den tremolite.
Some areas of this specimen have a brown mica, likely the magnesium mica, phlogopite.
Locality: Devil's Den Locality, Auburn, NH
Specimen Size: Satin 1.8 mm kyanite blade in nest of acicular kyanite.
Field Collected: Tom Mortimer - 2017
Catalog No.: 2034
Notes: See discussion for # 2033. Brown mica flakes are likely phlogopite.