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Updated: May 19, 2025
In all cases the original box work has been in thin sheets of calcite, and the heavy varieties are due to later deposits of calcite and aragonite crystals or, pop corn.
I have never seen any fine specimens of it from this locality, but deeper down in the rock it may occur in greater profusion. Dolomite occurs to a limited extent as such; most of it, being in the form of gurhofite crystals, may be occasionally found with aragonite of a light pearly gray color and rhombohedral crystals. As before noticed, Staten Island is the best locality for this species.
Between it and its walk of gneiss occur veins of the minerals so characteristic of the locality, and for which it has become famous serpentine, asbestos, phlozopite, gurhofite pyrites, biotite, aragonite, dolomite, tremolite, and possibly others in lesser quantity. Serpentine.
The scant moisture slowly makes its way down sloping sides and shelving edges, leaving on each small irregularity a tiny portion of its volume, to deposit an infinitely small charge of solid substance, and the balance finally hangs in moisture less than drops on the growing grains of the under surface. Pop-corn, therefore, is the globular aragonite of the stalagmitic variety.
Aragonite occurs in very small masses, of a light yellow color and fibrous structure, between layers of serpentine.
In the second division the visitor should notice the small aragonite vases, resembling wine-glasses; in the third case a slab, upon which are six vases of various shapes in calcareous stone; in the fourth a vase from Lower Egypt, with the quantity it holds inscribed upon it.
In the third case are some remarkable varieties of silicates, which contain borates from Norway and other countries; and in the fourth case are the first in order, of the carbonates, including carbonates of soda, the beautiful crystals of carbonate of baryta, carbonate of strontia and aragonites, from Aragon, Hungary, Bohemia, and Vesuvius; and in the next case are deposited further varieties of aragonite, and some remarkable varieties of calcite, or carbonate of lime.
The forms of crystal are chiefly aragonite. From here we pass to the "Chamber de Norcutt," which would be considered a very handsome room if it had no superiors: and the same can be said of Union College, in which, however, is the Fan Rock to claim special notice; an immense piece of fallen box work shaped like a lady's fan half opened.
In shells originally made of ARAGONITE, a crystalline form of carbonate of lime, that mineral is usually replaced by CALCITE, a more stable form of the same substance. The most common petrifying materials are calcite, silica, and pyrite. Often the organic substance has neither been preserved nor replaced, but the FORM has been retained by means of molds and casts.
The beauty of vegetation denied those desolate buttes and ridges is atoned for by a marvelous abundance of most wonderful crystals of aragonite, calcite, barite and satin spar; each to itself, or two or more combined in beautiful geodes or else arranged in great flat slabs crystallized on both sides of a thin sheet of lime.
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