Some of these are new and especially interesting: for example, seven out of the ten IMA-approved species containing scandium as an essential element are represented here, and four of them (
bazzite, cascandite, jervisite and scandiobabingtonite) are from the type locality, the Mottarone-Baveno pluton in eastern Piedmont.
For more than 30 years I worked at the same collecting site at Fibbia, bringing to light countless finds of iron roses, adularia, stilbite,
bazzite, xenotime, apatite and smoky quartz--and, on one occasion, pink fluorite and phenakite.
Of special interest to the geo-literati and the more advanced collectors is an excellent review of the early literature on Baveno, from the seminal work by Ermenegildo Pini, Memoire sur des nouvelles crystallizations de feldspath (1779), to Rome de l'Isle Cristallographie (1783), Gauthier D'Agoty's Histoire Naturelle (1781) and Hauy's Mineralogie (1801), and continuing with Quintino Sella, Giovanni Struver, Ettore Artini (who discovered two new species from Baveno: bazzite and bavenite) and a few more recent authors.
A section on the "Baveno classics" deals first with the famous orthoclase crystals, and includes also very interesting chapters on fluorite, on gadolinite and on the scandium minerals (Baveno is the type locality of bazzite, cascandite, jervisite and scandiobabingtonite; also, thorveitite has been found there: thus five of the nine known scandium minerals occur at Baveno).
Beryl ([Be.sub.3][Al.sub.2][Si.sub.6][O.sub.18]),
bazzite ([Be.sub.3][Sc.sub.2][Si.sub.6][O.sub.18]), stoppaniite ([Be.sub.3][Fe.sub.2.sup.3+][Si.sub.6][O.sub.18]) and indialite ([Al.sub.2]Si[Mg.sub.2][Al.sub.2][Si.sub.4][O.sub.18]) are isostructural with space group symmetry P[6.sub.3]/mcc, whereas pezzottaite, Cs[Be.sub.2]Li[Al.sub.2][Si.sub.6][O.sub.18], is rhombohedral with space group symmetry R[bar.3]c.
Other associated minerals are: scandiobabingtonite, scandian ixiolite, hingganite-(Y), cerian epidote, titanite, plumbomicrolite and other microlite minerals,
bazzite, milarite cassiterite and two unidentified tantalum minerals (rynersonite?
Hardness: not given, but probably about 7 or 8 by analogy with beryl and
bazzite. Tenacity: probably brittle.