[Rockhounds] Garza - Dr. Hurlbut Lovchlorrite

[Alan Goldstein]

Last night, I found a rare mineral with a story amongst Steve Garza's
mineral miscellany. This one is lovchlorrite - a variety of mosanderite-Ce.
(It's rich in rare earths.) The specimen has a tag on it -
"Lovechlorite (sic), Russia, Dr. Hurlbut '38." There are only five photos
of this mineral on Mindat. I hope to upload photos of this specimen.
Lovchlorrite was discovered in 1930 at a locality in the Kola Peninsula.
Dr. Cornelius Hurlbut (a mineralogist at Harvard who edited Dana's
'Mineralogy'  books in the 1940s & 50s) obtained this one a few years after
the species was found. I'm going to do more research on the specimen before
selling it.

Steve's collection is a treasure trove with "gems." I have part of the
first diamond drill core from Antarctica labeled by Dr. Robert Nichols, the
geologist who made it in 1957. I also found a sandwich container of washed
heavy sand he collected from western Antarctica in 1956. There was a
specimen of native lead from Langban, Sweden with a Washington Roebling
label, deaccessioned from the Smithsonian. It now belongs to the
Mineralogical Society of America - Roebling established a bequest that
funds the "American Mineralogist" still being published today. A number of
type locality minerals have turned up.

Steve could best be described as a mineralogical vacuum cleaner. I can
scarcely imagine many collections - with such diversity - so poorly
organized. That's one of the reasons the Garza's and I didn't sell the
collection lock, stock and barrel to a dealer. I'm in my eighth year of fun
going through the collection. Tremendous progress has been made but there
are still more boxes to be examined. I just unwrapped material from New
Britain, Connecticut in 1983 newspapers!

Recent visits have found Steve to be lucid and doing better. I'll be
bringing more material back for the Clement Show a month from today and my
driveway sale in mid-June.

Regards,
Alan Goldstein