The following notes are intended to bring to the notice of workers on heavy mineral grains the possible confusion between blue tourmaline, purple tourmaline, glaucophane, lepidolite, andalusite, pleochroic sillimanite, and dumortierite. Dumortierite (when blue) is very liable to be passed over as the more common mineral glaucophane, the optical properties of the cleavage-flakes of these minerals being similar in several respects.

Having seen a grain of dumortierite from the Wealden of Surrey, kindly lent me by Mr. H. A. Hayward, I was impressed by the remarkable nature of its pleochroism. A day or so later, while examining some concentrates of the Blackheath Beds of Shirley, Surrey, belonging to Mr. G. M. Davies, I came across a single grain which he had described as glaucophane. The pleochroism seemed too intense for a grain of glaucophane of that thickness, and it occurred to me that the tint observed, when the grain was in the position of maximum absorption, was exactly that of the dumortierite grain.