Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
On June 6, 1940, Mr. John Blackwood of Leadhills, while searching for gold in the alluvial wash at the head of the Shortcleuch Water, Leadhills, Lanarkshire, a spot which has for many years been the happy hunting ground of Mr. Blackwood and John D. Weir, Leadhills' two most persistent and successful gold winners, was lucky enough to discover a water-worn mass of gold in quartz weighing 501·2 grains, by far the largest and richest specimen that has been found within the memory of those living in the district. The specimen (plate I) was found while removing a mass of rock at a depth of about 3 feet, the exact spot being a few yards from the east bank of Shortcleuch Water, about midway between the ruined Lowther Cottage (wrongly shown on the six-inch Ordnance map, Lanarkshire 49 NE., as Lauder Cottage) and the junction with the Windgate Burn (Windgate Foot).
page 2 note 1 Hey, M. H. and Bannister, F. A., Russellite, a new British mineral. Min. Mag., 1938, vol. 25, pp. 41–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 2 note 2 Garby, J., Notice of the occurrence of gold in a cross-course in Cornwall. Trans. Roy, Geol. Soc. Cornwall, 1846, vol. 6, p. 266.Google Scholar
page 3 note 1 Russell, A., A notice of the occurrence of native arsenic in Cornwall, &c. Min. Mag., 1925, vol. 20, pp. 299–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 3 note 2 In the year 1860 Mr. Alphonse Gages of Dublin cbntributed a short paper entitled ‘On the formation of orpiment in a mass of sulphate of barytes, found interstratified in the carboniferous limestone near Silvermines, County of Tipperary’. Journ. Geol.. Soc. Dublin, 1860, vol. 8, pp. 243-244 and p. 246. This contains the very unconvincing statement that a mass of sulphate of barytes, coloured by sesquioxide of iron, and traversed by a series of filiform veins of galena and arsenical iron pyrites showed a slight coating of orpiment here and there, more of which was produced by a treatment with dilute hydrochloric acid. The specimen came from the old workings in the townland of Ballynoe, Silvermines. Of orpiment I have failed to find a trace at Ballynoe, although in the adjoining townland of Ballygown South traces of a bright yellow coating occur on some of the barytes.hemimorpkite-ochreous veinstuff. This coating contains cadmium and results from the alteration of cadmiferous blende. Similar coatings from other localities have usually been amused to be greenockite; Mr. F. A Bannister tells me, however, that X-ray photographs which he has taken of exactly similar material from Mill Close mine, Derbyshire, although containing cadmium do not give the greenockite pattern.
page 4 note 1 Stoddart, W. W., Notes on the metals found near Bristol. Proc. Bristol Naturalists' Soc., 1877, new series, vol. 2, pp. 68–76.Google Scholar
page 5 note 1 The Natural History of Pliny. John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1898, vol. 6, pp. 104-105. Auripigmentum (orpiment) ‘A mineral dug from the surface of the earth in Syria, and much used by painters’.
page 5 note 2 Newton Friend, J.. Realgar in Wookey Hole, Somerset. Nature, London, 1937, vol. 139, p. 72.Google Scholar
page 7 note 1 Spencer, L. J., Plagionite, heteromorphite and semseyite as members of a natural group of minerals. Min. Mag., 1899, vol. 12, pp. 55–68, fig. 2, p. 59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 7 note 2 Smith, G. F. Herbert, Semseyite from Dumfriesshire. Min. Mag., 1919, vol. 18, pp. 354–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
