Detailed information
Dimensions
36 x 48 x 29
mm
Weight
38 g
Locality
Virtuous Lady Mine Buckland Monachorum, Tavistock Devon, England
Condition
No recorded repairs
The fancifully named Virtuous Lady mine near the equally extravagant sounding village of Buckland Monachorum in west Devon is an old mine, but it shot to fame mineralogically in the 1830s when magnificent crystallized specimens of Siderite were discovered by Edmund Pearse. The most famous of all are the 'box' epimorphs of Siderite after Fluorite and the 'Lady's Slipper' Siderite epimorphs after Baryte, but, even the individual crystal forms of Siderite are many and varied. This miniature Siderite on Quartz is from Malcolm Southwood's collection and displays charming, small rounded aggregates of lenticular beige-coloured Siderite crystals on a bed of Quartz crystals. Under magnification the Siderite crystals look superb.