Sunday collecting

A week ago, on Sunday, together with Klaudia we went to check out a nearby outcrop created by road cuttings. It is located a few kilometers outside Mallow town, on the Fermoy road.

The rocks there are very "rich", as I call it (as opposed to "dead" or "poor"), meaning there are many gaps, slots and veins in them, making them a fantastic spot for collecting. The first time there we collected lots of transparent, clear, soft material that I believed was gypsum.

I made simple tests, like scratching the material with a fingernail and breaking a piece to study the cleavage. I also sent the above photo to a collector from Ireland just to double-check if I was right. How surprised was I when he told me that this is actually calcite! He told me to learn about rhombohedral fracture in calcite and I did so. Well, hard to believe but I really wasn`t able to tell the difference between calcite and gypsum. This only shows how inexperienced am I... The below photos show calcite and gypsum, I`ve found them on the Internet.

 Calcite above
Gypsum below

I wanted to clean my samples so I decided to experiment with some acids. Lemon juice didn`t help at all, but vinegar removed clay and iron staining very well. Unfortunately, it also made my samples matt...





Yesterday I went back to that place, this time with my boy-friend. We decided to look for something else. Unfortunately, no success this time. I only brought home three samples of rocks that I am still to identify.

 These two buddies are here with me only for educational purposes.  They are greyish-pinkish and have some yellow staining.








In this one we can distinguish layers of different-colored calcite cutting it right in the middle: white calcite inside, next brownish, then a thin layer of the pinkish rock and then yellow rock. I`ve called it "a sandwich", `cause it looks like one ;)

photo: Martina Gonzales Bardon

 Edit: a better shot of the two

Photo: Martina Gonzales Bardon

Photo: Marina Gonzales Bardon

And then there is this little dude. I fell in love with it from the first sight and I just had to take it home :) The rock is in fact light purple, with a red line dividing it from the calcite crystals. Dunno what it is, but I love it, and it`s gonna stay with me ;)





Here are some photos of beautiful calcite formations on the rocks.

 And some other findings from this site:

Still pretty stained calcite, and...

 ... a nice quartz crystal.





Thanks for reading!!!!