Agate Scotland

This is a fine example of the distinctive tube agates from the St Cyrus area. The interior of the nodule displays what I would call an enclosed "habitat". In other words, a space in isolation where nevertheless due to the filtration through what were once previously permeable membranes the invasion of a myriad of exotic minerals has influenced the inner topography. In turn this process has created chalcedony"organisms" resembling polychaete worms that coil and writhe among the mineral foliage. This idea conceptually is not so much fanciful as precisely how in my mind's eye I imagine the agate's formation. If we disregard the formalities of science I can see the face of the stone as one possible image of almost infinite variation, a slice of a three dimensional photograph of a moment in the minature evolution of a microcosm of geological nature.

                  Anyway, I digress, this tube (and moss) agate was found north of St Cyrus beach in a shinglebank during the late autumn of 2015. It is only clear to me now that in this area, moss, tube, stalactitic and zeolitic agates have a fluid nature and cross-propogate. I have a stone as yet unpolished or photographed that displays stalactites that in lowering from the "roof" of the nodule slowly coil to become organically metamorphosing tubes similar to those seen above. Some of the stalactites become tubes arranged in seemingly zeolitic sprays from the "floor" of the nodule also. Anyway, I repeatedly digress. That's for later. We go on.