Celestine - Lafarge Dundas North Quarry, Dundas, Hamilton, Wentworth Co., Ontario, Canada

Is most likely associated with minute marcasite, not galena.

Hi Tim,

I have seen small and tiny galena's on the celestines from there. Can't tell with this one, from the photo...

David K. Joyce

I noted your piece, Dave, it's quite remarkable. This one I think is the very normal minute brassy tabular marcasite, found in about 99% of all vugs at Dundas.

If it helps, tiny galena cubes are rarely found associated with celestine and/or fluorite in most of the quarries of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. It would not be too far fetched, therefore, to rarely find it in your nearby Ontario quarries. CHEERS.............BOB

Oh, we do indeed get buckets of PbS here at our limestone quarries. Never enough for my liking, lol, although a find in the seventies produced specimens worthy of the Tri-State Pb-Zn mines... drool...

But galena on celestine is very, very unusual for Dundas, and marcasite on celestine is very common, one second's examination with proper magnification will clear this up.

I see a small square black dot in the photo so a magnification would settle this.

Galena crystals <1 mm are noted in the Celestine pockets from time to time, but at this locality, they are few and far between. To have more than one or two on a Celestine crystal is quite rare indeed.

Much of the micros on this photo appear to be micro Marcasite blades, which is much more common, but not found on all Celestine crystals. As Rob noted, there is a square shape near the centre of the crystal face, which might be a Galena, but the rest seems more like the Marcasite blades.

The Galena crystals are more noted in the massive sulphide veins, with Sphalerite and Marcasite, but no Celestine, which are visible for collecting from time to time, though I haven't seen it for a few years.

Andrew Haighton,
Brampton, Ontario

Message sent.

I understand guys, it is hard to tell from the photo but, I assure you the piece has minute Galena present and not Marcasite. Very unusual as it may seem, it's not impossible!!

Andrew.

Andrew,

Good observation! I've seen it a number of times. I expect that if people looked closer at the inclusions, they'd probably see them more often!

David K. Joyce