Tiny Tuesday: Mineral

Firstly, thanks so much to everyone for the love expressed for my 4000th blip yesterday - you're all such lovely people. You sent it to pole position on "Popular" - such a thrill  :-))

So now here's my 4001st blip, for Jenny's TT challenge on "mineral". As is so often the case my Editor directed me to a drawer where she keeps a collection of interesting minerals (what would I do without her?!). This Galena looked the most likely to give an interesting macro blip.

I'm sure I learnt about Galena at school but that was more than a few years ago! So I had to look up details on Wikipedia: seemingly it can also be called "lead glance", it's the natural mineral form of lead sulphide, the most important ore of lead and also a good source of silver (I wonder if that's silver gleaming on the photo - if so it's a shame we only have this little piece of it). Fortunately in this state it's (almost) non-toxic!

There's more about it here.