Description

Detailed Description

This is a beautiful specimen, with deep coloured chabazite crystals on a bed of pearly heulandite crystals. The chabazite crystals are sharp, with top colour and lustre for this find. Upon close inspection, one can see that these heulandite crystals are also very fine crystals. In excellent condition – one chabazite at the left has a small chip and minor incomplete crystals around the periphery.

Great contrast, a very aesthetic piece.

About the Minerals and Localities of the Bay of Fundy (click here)

About These Red Chabazites From Wasson’s Bluff

In one relatively small zone at Wasson’s Bluff, the chabazite crystals are a particular dark red hue – more intense and lighter than a brown, and most are a bit deeper and darker than a brick red or deep orange. This zone has produced sporadically over history. Most often, days of very hard work in this area yield absolutely nothing, but a few isolated finds in recent years have produced a small number of excellent pieces – these specimens are from those finds.

In historic times, these particular deep-coloured chabazites from Wasson’s Bluff were known as “acadialite”, named for Acadia (which is the English for L’Acadie, the colonial-era name for this part of Canada). The name “acadialite” is sometimes still seen on older collection labels, sometimes as a species name and sometimes as a varietal name. Under current nomenclature, these specimens are known as chabazite, with “acadialite” now considered a historical synonym.