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| Mother Lode Crystalline Gold |
Having enjoyed "20 of the Most Stunning Minerals and Stones Your Eyes Have Ever Seen" (as opposed, presumably, to the ones you might have seen using other parts of your body) on the So Bad So Good website - which I strongly recommend you visit
here - I've spent the last hour
oohing and
aahing over more photographs of minerals, gemstones, stones, rocks, crystals, whatever (I have no idea what the difference is). I used to have a huge Harry N. Abrams book full of pictures of naturally-occurring gems and minerals, but I donated it to Oxfam to save space (this was before Oxfam began interfering in domestic politics) - and now I'm quite sorry I did. I have no interest in how minerals, gems etc. are formed - I'm so shallow, I just like looking at the pretty pictures. Not that all of them are pretty, of course - I love the weirdly alien ones that look like they were dreamt up by H.P. Lovecraft - but some minerals resemble a virulent attack of haemorrhoids, and, as the football commentators say, nobody's a fan of that.
As some of the minerals on So Bad So Good look like they've been interfered with, here's a selection of some that look completely natural (I could be wrong, of course):
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Crocoite
|
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| Chalcopyrite, Quartz, Rhodochrosite |
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| Manganvesuvianite |
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| Weloganite |
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| Bournonite |
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Purpurite
|
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| Cornetite |
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| Pyrite |
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| Beryl |
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| Bayldonite |
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| Andradite coating Hematite (okay - that's seriously weird) |
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| Cavansite ball on stilbite |
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| Crystalline gold |
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| Franckeite - straight out of Alien |
All of these pictures - and many more - are to found on Wikipedia's alphabetic List of Minerals,
here.
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