WAUG 05

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THIS UPDATE: AUGUST 2005

During the visitor season we are generally too busy to do much with displays, and this season has been no exception. Our activities in the Warren Museum have been confined for the most part to tinkering – fixing a malfunctioning lamp, moving a few specimens around, adding labels to specimens that still lacked them, etc. During the off-hours, however, we tend to things that most visitors never see, such as our specimen database, which is growing at a rapid rate as we try to catch up on our cataloguing duties. As with most museums, a large part of our efforts takes place behind the scenes.

Reference Collection

Although the Warren Museum contains what is probably the world’s largest public display of fluorescent minerals, the much larger reference collection is “where it’s at”, scientifically speaking, and it to this part of the collection that we devote the bulk of our time and effort. Organizing and cataloguing such a collection takes thousands of hours, but gradually we are getting the job done and transforming an interesting accumulation of specimens into a working scientific resource. Though we are still years away from being completely caught up, in part because we keep adding to the collection, great progress has nevertheless been made and will continue.

Microscopes

Last year the museum received a valuable donation of several dozen microscopes from Penn State University. This was a mixed lot including petrographic microscopes (some fitted for transmitted light and others for reflected light), metallographic scopes for use with reflected light only, and student-model biological (nonpolarizing) microscopes. Much related equipment (lamps, spare bulbs, accessory plates) was included as well. Several of the best research microscopes have just been returned to the museum after being refurbished by Dave Paschke, one of the foremost experts in this kind of work. We now have a very fine Leitz Ortholux Pol for reflected-light work, a Leitz Dialux Pol for transmitted light, and a fine, older-model Zeiss petrographic scope that will be dedicated to spindle-stage work. This gives the museum a research capability it had lacked before and further gives us an opportunity to identify some of the unknowns that have been accumulating in the collections.

Greenland trip

In July museum staff visited the Ilímaussaq complex in southwestern Greenland to collect specimens for the museum’s fluorescent and petrological collections. The Ilímaussaq complex is one of the world’s geological wonders: a layered igneous intrusion of such unusual chemistry that more than 200 mineral species have been found there. Among the material collected are three fine tugtupite specimens for the museum, each of different character and from three different localities. Though most of the specimens collected on this trip are nonfluorescent and destined for our petrographic collection, to a geologist they are quite significant and exciting. A display of the best fluorescent specimens collected by the five participants in this year’s expedition is planned for the Franklin Mineral Show in late September.

British Invasion

“The British are coming! The British are coming!” This was the penned notation for August 24, 2005, on a calendar in the Franklin Mineral Museum, where a dozen mineral collectors from Sussex (theirs, not ours) were due for an extended visit. The first wave of this invasion, however, had already swept over Sterling Hill a full year before, leaving in its wake not only vivid memories but also a number of specimens torn from the very bowels (yes, bowels) of England. Let me explain before your imaginations get ahead of you. . .

Some of you reading this may be familiar with Gavin Malcolm, a helpful and friendly chap who used to frequent Sterling Hill on his business trips to the United States. Gavin was a key element in getting members of the Sussex Mineral Club – a widely traveled group, it turns out – to visit the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in August 2004. That trip was coordinated by Richard Belson, who upon arrival immediately presented us with a two bags of coprolites from the famed coprolite diggings of Cambridgeshire (thus the allusion to “the bowels of England” above). Surely these were some of the strangest mines in history, but they were very real, very productive, and a source of much of that region’s fertilizer during the latter half of the 19^th century, until production from U.S. rock-phosphate deposits put an end to the Cambridgeshire coprolite industry. Those specimens have since been entered into the Sterling Hill Mining Museum’s ore collection.

This year’s trip was coordinated by John Pearce, yet another in the growing list of U.K. folks we are fortunate to know. Gavin was unable to attend due to health problems, but Richard Belson was able to make it, bearing with him several boxes of specimens put together by members of his group for our museum. As this newsletter goes to press we have not yet unpacked all the specimens, but the few we have thus far been able to view include some nicely fluorescent species from classic British occurrences. Anyone who collects fluorescent minerals in the U.S. knows how difficult it can be to find good European specimens at stateside mineral shows, but we in the Warren Museum now have help at the source. And believe us, fellow Sussexites, we appreciate it more than we can express. The reference collection of the Warren Museum continues to grow at a rapid pace, due in no small measure to friends like you.

Reference Collection

Microscopes

Greenland trip

British Invasion

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