Abstract
The granite pegmatites of Connecticut have yielded a large number of interesting minerals in the past. The feldspar quarries of Branchville and Haddam Neck have been most productive, but other quarries in the vicinity of Middletown and Portland—especially the Strickland quarry, Collins Hill, Portland— have produced a goodly number of specimens. Professor William North Rice1 has listed the minerals from Middletown and vicinity as follows: Sphalerite, magnetite, gahnite, chrysoberyl, bismutite, orthoclase (crystals), albite, oligoclase, beryl, iolite, garnet, epidote, tourmaline, muscovite (crystals), lepidolite, biotite, columbite, samarskite, monazite, triplite, torbernite, autunite, uraninite. Manganese occurs in the pegmatites usually as a phosphate or columbate-tantalate compound, but the silicate, rhodonite, has not appeared, as far as known, in any of the Connecticut pegmatites, until recently.
