Description

This is one of the best quartz inclusion specimens I’ve ever examined. It is a sliced, polished quartz crystal cross-section. It’s beautiful without magnification, and with magnification it is spectacular. The centre is deep purple amethyst with zoning.  Growing generally outwards from the centre (all the way to the outer margin) are elongated, needle-like hematite growths – these look silvery black, until you are examining them with some magnification under strong light, at which point you can see quite a few are red. Where the amethyst borders the colourless outer region of the crystal, there is a zone with beautiful sharp perfect hexagonal crystals of hematite, many of which are on the needle growths. Most of the hematite crystals are intense deep red, and a few are silvery metallic. From the John White quartz collection, this is one of his favourites (the final specimen photo is his).