Are Mineral Specimens Without Labels Fewtrils?

Are mineral specimens without labels fewtrils?  In the initial attempt at this post, I asserted as much.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun fewtrils (always in the plural) means:  “Small or trivial things; knick-knacks.”  It’s a lovely word and I first learned of it during the 2021 National Spelling Bee.  New York Times reporter Alan Yuhas offered it and several others from the 2021 contest as evidence to argue that the National Spelling Bee words “weren’t always this hard.”  The recent contest featured words that were hard, obscure, and seldom encountered.  The Oxford English Dictionary places fewtrils in Frequency Band 1 which “contains extremely rare words unlikely ever to appear in modern text.”

The origin of the word is uncertain, though the OED suggests it might be an “alteration” of fattrels, a Frequency Band 1 noun used in Scotland meaning “ribbon-ends.”  Fattrels comes from the French fatraille defined as “trash” or “things of no value.”

I wrestled with whether it was fair to apply fewtrils to a gift of several dozen minerals I recently received on behalf of a fossil and mineral club.  This generous donation, from the widow of a man whose father had collected them, will support the club financially through our auctions or generate good will via giveaways.  What has come to me in the past few days are the specimens the donor’s husband held back when he gave away his father’s collection many years ago.  I have no idea what prompted him to retain these, whether they held some special meaning for him, whether he felt these were particularly attractive specimens, or whether these were the dregs that he couldn’t give away.

There is one thing that binds nearly all of these items together:  a lack of any identifying label and, so, there is no information as to what the minerals were believed to be, where they were found, or when they were collected.

I fear this post will be taken as showing a lack of gratitude for this gift, the undercutting of an act of generosity by a bit of petty criticism.  That’s not what I intend.  I acknowledge and salute the gift, but lament that I know so very little about these specimens.  And, though they still have value, there’s a lesson to be learned for today’s and tomorrow’s collectors, one that is painful given how striking many of the donated minerals are, as the pictures that follow attest.

Only the fifth image from the top shows a specimen that sports a label:  "Quartz crystals, Ark."

The absence of an identifying label is a big deal.  Ronald Louis Bonewitz in Rock and Gem:  The Definitive Guide to Rocks, Minerals, Gems, and Fossils (Smithsonian, 2008) wrote:

In the beginning, all of this [note taking and labelling] may not seem so important, but as a collection grows, so does the likelihood of mixing up specimens and forgetting the localities where they were found.  Precise information enhances both the financial value of specimens and their scientific interest. (p. 23)

In his interesting, self-published, slim volume titled The Collecting Bug:  A Rock Collector’s Philosophy of Life (2020), amateur rock, mineral, and fossil collector Bob Farrar, devotes a chapter to the labelling of specimens.  His position is clear:  the chapter is titled “Label, Label, LABEL!”  He asserted:

[P]roperly labeled mineral and fossil specimens constitute knowledge, i.e., the knowledge that that particular mineral or fossil occurs at a particular place. . . .  A specimen can always be identified later, but missing locality information is often gone forever.  A specimen of, say, calcite, with no locality information does not constitute knowledge that calcite occurs at a particular place.  That calcite specimen may still be useful for education purposes, such as demonstrating double refraction, or as a decorative piece to sit on a shelf somewhere.  But, it does not constitute knowledge. (p. 34) 

So, are minerals without labels really fewtrils?  I don’t think so.  Though Bonewitz posited that such specimens are certainly less valuable financially and scientifically, they are not without some value.  Even some that border on being nearly worthless (knick-knacks) may have some beauty which may turn each of them, in Farrar’s words, into “a decorative piece to sit on a shelf somewhere.”

This line of reasoning isn't unique to minerals.  I and many others have argued that fossils without labels are just rocks, but perhaps they're actually a bit more than that.

Is there a noun for objects worth less than they could have been?

[Later edit:  Disappointments is, I think, entirely too negative, bordering on fewtrils.]

Buying a Fossil for its Label

There are myriad reasons for acquiring a fossil from a dealer, but it was a new one for me when the impulse to buy a small gastropod fossil came not from the specimen itself but, rather, from the typewritten paper label that was nestled in the box with the fossil.

The label is 6.3 cm long.

I should make clear that my use of the term “label” in this post is not, I suspect, strictly paleontologically kosher.  For example, the American Museum of Natural History, in its Collections Management site on its Paleontology Portal, defines a label as the numbering that is applied to a fossil specimen itself, not the separate cataloguing record, which is much closer to what in this post I am referring to as a “label.”  That said, the two – numbering on the specimen and the catalogue record – are inextricably (we hope) linked.

Labels (as I am defining them here) are the lifeblood of a fossil collection, accomplishing the essential task of linking specimens to the specific places they were found.  Two pieces of information in the label accomplish that:  description of the location and a specimen number.  Yes, more information can be, and usually is, assigned to a specimen through a label, including, among other data, the scientific name of the fossil (the organism from which it came), the name of collector, date of collection, formation where collected, and age of the specimen.  Though in many ways the label shown above is a prime example of a useful label, it has some limitations.

The location description leaves a bit to be desired.  I suspect that this label’s identification of place – “E. of Labelle, Hendry Co., Florida” – meant a very specific location to the collector R.J. Bland, Jr.  Nevertheless, as it comes to me, this probably would not be sufficient for me to find and explore the spot where the fossil was found.

And, of course, absent the same specimen number written on both the fossil and the label, I cannot be absolutely certain that this label was prepared for this specific fossil, but the likelihood is, I think, overwhelming.

Here then is the specimen to which this label was associated – a fairly well preserved example of a fossil Apple Murex which is 4.9 cm long.

Things have changed since this fossil was found and its label prepared.  For instance, Chicoreus pomum is now known as Phyllonotus pomum.  The formation (as written on the label, ‘“Glades” (Unit A)’) is currently designated the Bermont Formation and its age is considered to be Middle Pleistocene, some 1.1 to 1.8 million years ago.  (Primary sources for this information are the World Register of Marine Species (entry for Phyllonotus pomum), and Molluscs:  Bermont Formation (Middle Pleistocene) by Roger W. Portell and B. Alex Kittle, Part 13 of Florida Fossil Invertebrates, a publication of the Florida Paleontological Society, December 2010.)

What hasn’t changed is the name of the collector R. J.  Bland, Jr.  And therein lies one of the most attractive aspects for me of many fossil labels – the link between specimen and collector.  I have, for example, seen labels for specimens in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History where the collector is identified as John Bell Hatcher, one of my paleontology heroes (see post).  When someone of Hatcher’s stature is directly connected to the specimen before me the feeling is electric.  Though it wasn’t quite the same experience when I spotted the name of the collector of the Apple Murex, there was a spark.  It was a name I knew.

In a post a couple of years ago on state geological surveys and the rocks and minerals (and sometimes fossils) that they put up for sale to the general public, I described the rocks and minerals that the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (the state’s geological survey) sent me. They were small samples affixed to the inside of a box.  The label described these samples as coming “from the collection of Rudolph J. Bland, Jr.”  No further identification of Bland was provided and I could uncover little additional information on the web.  Yet, through some good fortune, today here in my hands is a gastropod fossil collected in Florida by R.J. Bland, Jr., who, I feel, has to be the same Rudolph J. Bland, Jr., whose rock and mineral collection the Virginia state geological survey is busy dispersing, small specimen by small specimen.  (How the state geological survey came to be doing that is yet another tale waiting to be told.)

Finally, how this fossil shell found its way into the dealer’s collection of wares that he had on sale at a particular gem and mineral show that I attended is a story with a touch of serendipity.  This dealer had very, very few shells for sale amid the myriad fossilized remains of dinosaurs, sharks, marine reptiles, and the like.  Indeed, he admitted that shells are of little interest to him because he felt they’re of little interest to collectors.  This specific specimen with its label came into his possession because of some horse trading he had entered into several years ago with a woman who was trying to clear her basement of an unwanted fossil collection.  He offered her a price for the good stuff (that is, the teeth and bones) and she countered by asking that he name a price that would cover the entire collection, shells included.  He goosed his offer a small bit and both went away happy.

There’s a moral in here somewhere about the fate of collections and collectors, and I wonder if that moral might be stronger if I knew how the woman came in possession of this Apple Murex with its little label in the first place.

The Romance of Labeling

The American Museum of Natural History makes it clear, in no uncertain terms:

The importance of having a catalog number on the specimen cannot be stressed enough. If a specimen becomes detached from its number, it has lost most of its scientific significance.

Others have said a label is the difference between a fossil and a pretty rock. It’s understood that the identity of a fossil is inherent in where it was found and the be-all and end-all is the permanent label ensuring that the fossil never loses that identity. Severing a fossil from its identity is as simple as separating it from its catalog number, or, indeed, never giving it a number in the first place.

The experts tell me that India ink is the marking ink of choice. India ink . . . the name exudes history, though, as any student of history knows, things are seldom as they seem. India ink is a carbon-based permanent ink that actually originated in China, only later coming to Europe by way of India. The French call it Chinese ink, how perverse. Special pens are recommended. India ink and special pens – thrilling. These are items that require a visit to an art store.

I love art stores. As long as I don’t open my mouth, I delude myself into believing that everyone in the store will take me for an artist as I cast what I hope passes for a knowing eye on the tubes of oil paint or the sketch pads. I get the same rush walking into a store that sells musical instruments, particularly electric guitars and drum sets and the like. Yes, I really do know that I’m easily labeled a poseur just from my body language and absence of body art.

Several purchases and some experimenting later, I have grown frustrated by the volatility of India ink. It seems to spread faster when spilled than any ink I’ve ever seen. The finicky nature of the pen doesn’t help. I want this process to work, so, I have done some more reading on the process and monitored some online discussions. Done right, this is more complicated than it seemed at first. Since my collection is primarily shark teeth, I turned to one of the bibles on shark teeth collecting in the mid-Atlantic area (my home terrain) – Bretton W. Kent’s Fossil Sharks of the Chesapeake Bay Region (1994):

Specimens can be labelled in several ways. For shark fossils the easiest method is to simply write the catalog number on the specimen with permanent black ink. The number should be placed on a smooth, inconspicuous area of the specimen. The crown is an ideal place on teeth, because the smooth, nonporous surface allows the number to be small in size, but still readily legible. However, the enameloid is so smooth that an inked number, even when dry, can still be easily worn off by handling. To prevent this, cover the dried ink with a rectangular patch of clear enamel . . . that is only slightly larger than the number. (p. 126)

It’s beginning to seem like real work. My usual solution in such a situation is to search for a different opinion, one more to my liking. Jasper Burns, author of Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic States (1991), comes through for me, sort of:

But what about sharks’ teeth, whose back sides look as good as their fronts, or tiny fossils? If you decide to keep each specimen in a small, separate tray, there is no problem: number the tray or label it with all collecting information. This is the customary way to store and display fossils. I prefer to arrange the specimens together on a felt surface, segregated by locality . . . – and hope I don’t spill the drawer. (p.37)

No writing on teeth. I like that. But, hope I don’t spill the drawer?

As much as it pains me to forego the India ink, at this stage I will keep on with my old system for my teeth which offers somewhat more assurance that specimens wont lose their identity in my hands. All of my finds or acquisitions are associated with a location and a date. I catalog only the best of the lot in an electronic catalog (backed up on a separate hard disk and periodically printed out). Each cataloged specimen has a number affixed to it with a little white sticky (no, I know it’s not permanent) and is housed, typically, in its own small hard plastic box with a lid that snaps shut. Each is resting on a small piece of foam rubber in the box. A paper label printed from my electronic catalog is stored inside box, giving the catalog number, genus and species, and location where found. As a result, if the sticky number comes off while the specimen is in its box, no problem. Spills aren’t an issue either. Sure, care has to be taken if more than one of these specimens is outside of its box. Oh, there’s further protection, nearly every cataloged specimen is photographed, labial and lingual side shots with a catalog number in the picture.

For the myriad other teeth that I have yet to catalog or which are sufficiently redundant as to not merit cataloging, ziplock plastic baggies in various sizes come to the rescue. Labels are affixed to the baggies with the date and location of discovery. Trying to remove sloppy labels from the plastic bags has shown that these are unlikely to come off inadvertently (they hardly come off deliberately). But, even if they do, the beta nature of these specimens leads to a shrug of the shoulders.

Okay, that’s the teeth. Looking back over what I’ve written, I recognize there’s a lot of work just in my half-baked process. And, what about the rest of the small but growing number of non-tooth specimens now resting in drawers and boxes? Sigh, maybe, just maybe, I’ll try India ink again.

In the final analysis, why am I in search of permanent identification? My small collection holds the key to nothing. Who am I kidding as I envision my specimens with small, elegant, perfectly legible black alphanumerics inconspicuously inked on them?

Here's why. Beyond the intellectual satisfaction of doing science, even if in my fumbling, amateurish fashion, there’s the emotional satisfaction, a succumbing to the romance of the hand-inked identification numbers and letters gracing specimens. They are a vicarious tie to history and the great naturalists whose collections of fossils and everything else (including finches, mockingbirds, and, even, pigeons) helped establish so much that is important in science. They wrote on their specimens, wrote identifying information such as that on these bones of a red runt pigeon. The writer in this instance . . . Charles Darwin.


Portion of photograph by Robert Clark accompanying the article “Was Darwin Wrong?”, National Geographic, November, 2004