1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Greenockite

by Leonard James Spencer

GREENOCKITE, a rare mineral composed of cadmium sulphide, CdS, occurring as small, brilliant, honey-yellow crystals or as a canary-yellow powder. Crystals are hexagonal with hemimorphic development, being differently terminated at the two ends. The faces of the hexagonal prism and of the numerous hexagonal pyramids are deeply striated horizontally. The crystals are translucent to transparent, and have an adamantine to resinous lustre; hardness 3-31/2; specific gravity 4.9. Crystals have been found only in Scotland, at one or two places in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, where they occur singly on prehnite in the amygdaloidal cavities of basaltic igneous rocks—a rather unusual mode of occurrence for a metallic sulphide. The first, and largest crystal (about 1/2 in. across) was found, about the year 1810, in the dolerite quarry at Bowling in Dumbartonshire, but this was thought to be blende. A larger number of crystals, but of smaller size, were found in 1840 during the cutting of the Bishopton tunnel on the Glasgow & Greenock railway; they were detected by Lord Greenock, afterwards the 2nd earl of Cathcart, after whom the mineral was named. A third locality is the Boyleston quarry near Barrhead. At all other localities—Przibram in Bohemia, Laurion in Greece, Joplin in Missouri, &c.—the mineral is represented only as a powder dusted over the surface of zinc minerals, especially blende and calamine, which contain a small amount of cadmium replacing zinc.

Isomorphous with greenockite is the hexagonal zinc sulphide (ZnS) known as wurtzite. Both minerals have been prepared artificially, and are not uncommon as furnace products. Previous to the recent discovery in Sardinia of cadmium oxide as small octahedral crystals, greenockite was the only known mineral containing cadmium as an essential constituent.  (L. J. S.)