A guide to the minerals of Switzerland by M. Weibel. 123 pp. + 24 plates. Interscience Publishers. Wiley. November 1966. Price 45/—
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 128 KB
- Volume
- 5
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0072-1050
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This is an unusual mineralogy book and a good one. It is a hand book for mineral collectors working in Switzerland. Switzerland is famous for high quality mineral specimens. Most of these come from a suite of veins which are either open or filled with clay so that the minerals lining the cavities developed their own forms. The book starts with 12 pp. on general aspects of the Occurrences of the minerals. Following this are 40 pp. of notes on the minerals. No space is wasted on repeating descriptive details which can be found in any elementary text book on minerals. The notes all concern special features of the Swiss minerals and their occurrence and include information on size, morphology, inclusions, occurrence, colour and composition. This chapter contains 71 beautiful colour photographs of the minerals. These are the best and most consistently good series of mineral photographs I have seen. The third chapter contains 27 pp. of description of the field occurrences of the minerals. These descriptions are more important than for most mineral occurrences. The Swiss minerals are of some value and newly found veins are usually complctely worked out before anyone other than the finder sees them. The final chapter contains 7 pp.
of hints for collectors. This is a most unusual and valuable chapter. It is pointed out that a visitor is unlikely to find any of the better quality crystals, so a list of professional collectors (a special feature of Swiss mineralogy) and dealers is given together with a warning about prices. For those who cannot afford these prices a list of collections of Swiss minerals in Swiss museums is included. I was once told in Switzerland that the best collection of all was in the British Museum. Since the book is written in English this collection should have been mentioned. For the benefit of the determined collector 15 maps of localities are included together with some notes on trips and on the laws controlling mineral collecting (licences are required!) The book is well supplied with indexes. There is one of minerals and another of localities for each of which the minerals and maps are listed.
No mention is made in the book of a translator so presumably Professor Weibel wrote the book in English. If this is so he has made a good job of it but has been let down by the publishers. They have failed to correct his occasional errO13-''5 cm large", "amethyst that is however far from gemmy", "of recent years", "quarries running in Switzerland" and so on.
D.F.