Native Arsenic

The Akadani mine lies on the coast a little south-west of the city of Fukui on Honshu Island in Japan.  Although worked as an antimony mine, it is now famous amongst collectors as the locality for well crystallised Native Arsenic.  This small thumbnail, more accurately a micromount, of interlaced rhombohedral crystals forms a pixelated sphere about 1.2 cm in diameter.  The sooty-light grey native Arsenic adopts a spherical habit because each 1 to 3 mm rhombohedral crystal is sightly rotated to that adjacent to it, thus building a stepped curved surface.  This is an excellent and characteristically formed Native Arsenic from the Akadani mine.