[Sca-cooks] OT OOP tedious process

[Daniel & Elizabeth Phelps]

I've collected beebee shot sized garnet crystals from anthills myself while 
attending a geological field camp in New Mexico and I had an undergrad 
professor who talked about collecting forams in the same manner.  I recall 
reading or hearing about a turquoise discovery in the western US being made 
by a prospector examining the material kicked out of a critter's burrow.

Regards diamonds, they were know to the arabs in period and are mentioned in 
at least one period book I can recall in translation.  If I recall correctly 
diamonds in the US's northeastern and northern part of the midwest have been 
found as the result of glacial float out of Canada from the last ice age.  A 
small number have turned up in North Carolina over the years but as to where 
those came from no one knows.  Arkansas has a diamond "pipe" that is 
accessable to the public.  Periodically gems of several carats turn up 
there.  What with global warming there have been diamond "strikes" in Canada 
and Greenland relatively recently.

Daniel

mka Daniel C. Phelps, P.G.