The curious history of the mineral eggonite is reviewed, and two new occurrences are described. The original specimens, for which Schrauf gave good morphological and optical data in 1879, with a tentative suggestion that it was a cadmium silicate, were fakes; the tiny crystals of the new mineral were glued on to hemimorphite specimens from Altenberg, Belgium. In 1929, Zimanyi edited and published observations by Krenner, who found the mineral on silver ores from Felsöbánya, Hungary, added to Schrauf's physical data, and identified it as an aluminium phosphate. It was not until 1959 that Mrose and Wappner showed that it is scandium phosphate, ScPO4 · 2H2O, and essentially identical with kolbeckite, described by Edelmann in 1926 as a phosphate and silicate of beryllium, aluminium, and calcium from Saxony, and with sterrettite, described by Larsen and Montgomery in 1940 as an aluminium phosphate from Fairfield, Utah.

In 1980 the IMA Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names, while accepting the identity of the three minerals and rejecting the name sterrettite, were almost equally divided over the names eggonite and kolbeckite, which are thus both acceptable; since eggonite has 47 years priority, we suggest that it should have preference.

The available physical and chemical data on eggonite are summarized and added to, and two new occurrences, at Potash Sulfur Springs, Arkansas, and at Sakpur, Gujarat, India, are described.

Emerald green chromian 2M1 mica occurs in metamorphosed and metasomatized limestones, related to serpentinic rocks from Sierra Nevada, Spain. Chemical analysis gave: SiO2 44.51, Al2O3 27.60, TiO2 0.17, Cr2O3 3.35, Fe2O3 1.76, FeO 0.07, MnO 0.00, MgO 8.59, Li2O 0.03, Rb2O 0.01, BaO 0.01, CaO 1.71, Na2O 0.40, K2O 7.86, H2O 4.21 = 100.28. Optic properties are: pleochroism X blue, Y green, Z bluish green; refractive indices: α=1.562, β=1.611, γ=1.616 (yellow light); inclined dispersion, r > v. Orientation: second order mica. Refined parameters are a = 5.2116(6), b = 9.045(2), c = 19.97(2)Å, β = 95.7(3)°. The structure is discussed and an order in the octahedral M(1) sites is observed, but no ordering in the tetrahedral T(1) and T(2) cations is detected. The mica described is a mariposite with anoma-lously high contents of Ca and Mg.

The dolerites and gabbros of the Tertiary central complex of Slieve Gullion, NE Ireland, represent a suite of tholeiitic magmas (varying from tholeiitic basalt to tholeiitic andesite, Gamble 1979a) which crystallized in the root-zone of a shield volcano. The ubiquity of biotite suggests that the magmas were hydrous and, in addition, both silicate (olivine) and oxide (Ti-magnetite) phases show evidence for oxidation at high temperatures.

Instrumental methods of chemical analysis, including electron and ion-probes, X-ray fluorescence, atomic absorption, and plasma-source spectrometry, have largely replaced classical wet-chemical analysis except for ‘referee’ analyses, but have not so far proved able to determine the net state of oxidation of a rock or mineral with reasonable accuracy. Mössbauer spectroscopy can indeed give fairly accurate Fe2+ and Fe3+ estimates in favourable circumstances, but fails when the Fe2+: Fe3+ ratio is very small or very large or when the iron is present in several different lattice positions with different surroundings; and it cannot arrive at the net state of oxidation when other elements of variable valency are present. The term ‘net state of oxidation’ calls for some comment, and is dealt with in the full paper; for the moment we note as an example that Mössbauer spectroscopy shows that much of the iron in ludlockite is ferric, whereas a ‘ferrous iron’ determination corresponds to an arsenate of lead and ferrous iron, from which it follows that part of the arsenic must be trivalent, a result that could not have been arrived at from either the ‘ferrous iron’ or the Mössbauer data along. Thus in the present state of the art a wet-chemical method for net state of oxidation is a necessity.

Childrenite (Fe,Mn)AlPO4,(OH)2.2H2O, the iron-rich end-member of the childrenite-eosphorite diadochic series, was first discovered by Brooke (1823) on specimens from near Tavistock in Devon. Subsequently it has been recorded from a small number of other British localities, mostly in the Tavistock area, and also from near St. Austell in Cornwall, and from one locality in Cumbria. The Sir Arthur Russell collection, now in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.), has specimens from a few additional localities, all near Tavistock, and the Geological Museum, Institute of Geological Sciences, has a specimen from Wheal Jane, near Truro.