A beautiful combination specimen one of North America’s  most important localities (probably THE most).  This specimen, in typical St. Hilaire fashion, combines at least a few species: hundreds of small rhodochrosites, some albite, and a single sphalerite crystal are all nestled on a pair of terminated black aegirines.

 Where it differs from most though, is that it is not a huge mass of minerals.  For all the rare and amazing things that come from this locality, surprisingly few do not come as jumbled masses.

 As a side note, Mindat lists 384 species as being found at this location, of which it is the type locality for a staggering 58 species.  For comparison, Gebhard’s Tsumeb II lists 242 species at Tsumeb (Mindat gives 264, with 61 type localities.)  As I said earlier though, the stuff from MSH isn’t quite as flashy as what Tsumeb produced… one of the reasons why most people have more specimens from Tsumeb than MSH (micromounters excepted…)