The following brief notes on the occurrence of these gems in one of the least known portions of the Siamese ruby fields may prove of interest, as the particular district to which they refer has very rarely, if ever, been visited before by any European, whilst nothing at all has ever been written on the subject as far as I am aware. The notes are chiefly extracts from my journal for the months of May and June 1892, which I venture to present with as little modification as possible, in the belief that a description written on the spot is likely to give a more correct and vivid, even although it be a less highly finished picture of the locality than can be attained by any subsequent elaboration.

In the year 1890 Mr. S. L. Penfield described a new copper mineral, to which he gave the name of Spangolite in honour of Mr. Norman Spang, by whom it was first brought to his notice. Of this beautiful mineral only a single specimen was found, and the exact locality has never been ascertained; it belonged to a man living near Tombstone in Arizona, who had gathered together a collection of minerals within a radius of about 200 miles, and it is described by Mr. Penfield as " a rounded mass of impure euprite which was mostly covered with hexagonal crystals of Spangolite associated with a few crystals of azurite and some slender prismatic crystals of a copper mineral containing chlorine, probably atacamite."

The great variation which occurs in the specific gravity of zircons seems to render it possible that the presence of fluid and gas inclusions might, to some extent, account for this. A small, partly red, partly eolourless crystal was selected from a number of others all derived from the Riou Pezzoliou, Expailly, near Le Puy, which, when examined under the microscope, was found to contain numerous inclusions, some with, others without bubbles.

Through the kindness of Professor D. Hahn of the South African College, Cape Town, I received, some time since, a series of specimens of fulgurites which were collected in the vicinity of Griquastad.

In this locality Professor Hahn informs me that there is a particular sand hill which is noted among the farmers living in the neighbourhood for the frequency with which it is struck by lightning during thunderstorms.

In a quartz crystal, slightly over 2¾ inches in length, which has been in my possession for many years, and was stated to come from Derbyshire (possibly Castleton), there is a curious white cirrous inclusion which describes a graceful feather-like curve, and consists of a series of nearly parallel lines of colourless and transparent to opaque snow-white grains, which, under the microscope, are seen to be at times well defined rhombohedra; but for the most part they present the appearance of thorn. bohedra which have been more or less eroded, and they are so ranged in lines that one rhombohedron lies with one pair of faces slightly above or below the corresponding pair of faces of the succeeding rhombohedron, thus giving the line a distinctly serrated edge.

As the preliminary examination of the Makariwa stone had already indicated to Professor Ulrich the presence of mineral constituents having the physical characters of olivine, enstatite, glass, a substance resembling glass, nickel-iron, troilite, magnetite, hydrous oxide of iron, and possibly chromite, the quantitative chemical anslysis presented obvious difficulties, among which may be specially mentioned the fact that one chemical element (iron) enters into the composition of each of the above fine-grained and closely intermingled constituents. This chemical examination I was invited to undertake by Professor J. W. Judd, F.R.S., through whom the two fragments of the stone sent to this country by Professor Ulrich have been generously presented to the British Museum.

Some specimens of this rare mineral have recently been kindly forwarded to me by Mr. J. R. McKay, Manager of the Broken Hill South Silver Mining Company, New South Wales, together with a report upon them by Mr. J. O. Armstrong of the above mine, and Mr. A. D. Carmichael of the Broken Hill Proprietary Block 10 mine, as follows :—

“Mineral found at the Broken Hill South Mine, at the 300 feet level in the carbonate of lead stopes, below original water level.