Swedish blondes

This is one of the more obscure products sold by our favorite vendor. It's the 24th volume of the Mineralogical Magazine and Journal of the Mineralogical Society, compromising nos. 148-159, published 1935-37, edited by L J Spencer, CBE, FRS. The venerable society was instituted on February 3, 1876 and amalgamated with the Crystallological Society in 1883.

If you are an advanced student of geology, this might just be your idea of lighter bedtime reading, but personally I was bewildered. But then, I always assumed that the difference between a rock and a hard place is very slight, and that stones of course can't fall from the sky…

What I am supposed to make of an article entitled “The paragenesis of kyanite-amphibolites”, which deals with para-amphibolites, biotite-hornblende-schists, and hornblende-Garbenschiefer derived from sediments of the character of calcareous and dolomitic shales? Or an X-ray examination of substituted edingtonites? Or a probably very intriguing, if you understand it, piece on the transfusion of quartz xenoliths in alkali basic and ultrabasic lavas from south-west Uganda?

When I visited the Geological Library at the University of Stockholm about 15 years ago, I was shocked. I assumed that the average geology student was a young male nerd with huge specs and greasy hair. Instead, the library facility was dominated by blonde females in the age span 20-25…

Ooookay.

So this is what Swedish blondes read, then? Substituted edingtonites? Good grief, girls!