Phosphate of Lime with Garnets

This substance, which I have received from the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, by favour of several friends, as a phosphorescent Granite, appears to be a fibrous Phosphate of Lime with Garnets, either decomposing, or not so perfectly formed as usual, but showing plainly the Garnet dodecaedron more or less interrupted by the Phosphate of Lime. Mr. Jackson, F. L.S., found some at Tierbagger and Culterby, on the Dee side, near Aberdeen, and it is certainly a curious production, not mentioned in any British or even foreign authors. If a fragment be placed on a hot iron or poker, it has the blueish glowing phosphorescent appearance of some of the Fluors. The Garnets in this rock are sometimes so small as to be almost invisible: sometimes they appear only in the form of irregular blotches; but occasionally they are more regular and not attached to the rock, but only fill up a dodecaedral hollow, and have then the appearance of the lower figure, yet seem to be much mixed with the substance of the rock. The Phosphate of Lime is in small bundles of fibres closely matted together, of a pale blueish green in the most compact pans, but whiter and even brownish near the surface, where it is in a decomposing state.