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Bible Encyclopedias
Diaspore
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or a native aluminium hydroxide, A10(OH), crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and isomorphous with gothite and manganite. It occurs sometimes as flattened crystals, but usually as lamellar or scaly masses, the flattened surface being a direction of perfect cleavage on which the lustre is markedly pearly in character. It is colourless or greyish-white, yellowish, sometimes violet in colour, and varies from translucent to transparent. It may be readily distinguished from other colourless transparent minerals, with a perfect cleavage and pearly lustre - mica, talc, brucite, gypsum - by its greater hardness of 62-7. The specific gravity is 3.4. When heated before the blowpipe it decrepitates violently, breaking up into white pearly scales; it was because of this property that the mineral was named diaspore by R. J. Hairy in 1801, from 8caa7rEip€Lv, " to scatter." The mineral occurs as an alteration product of corundum or emery, and is found in granular limestone and other crystalline rocks. Well-developed crystals are found in the emery deposits of the Urals and at Chester, Massachusetts, and in kaolin at Schemnitz in Hungary. If obtainable in large quantity it would be of economic importance as a source of alumina. (L. J. S.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Diaspore'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/d/diaspore.html. 1910.
