Belomorite - trade name for a type of plagioclase feldspar, discovered originally near the White Sea in Northern Karelia, Russia by Alexander E. Fersman in 1925.
He described it thus:
...a white, barely bluish stone, barely translucent, barely transparent, but clean and even, like a well-ironed tablecloth. The stone was split along individual shiny surfaces, and some mysterious light played on these edges. These were gentle bluish-green, barely noticeable iridescences, only occasionally they flashed with a reddish light, but usually a continuous mysterious moonlight flooded the entire stone, and this light came from somewhere from the depths of the stone — well, just like the Black Sea burns with blue light in autumn evenings near Sevastopol. The delicate pattern of the stone from some thin stripes crossed it in several directions, as if imposing a mysterious lattice on the rays emanating from the depths. I collected, selected, admired and again turned the moonstone towards the sun.
- Memories of Stone, 1940
(One of the most beautiful descriptions of a mineral I have ever come across)
This mineral is more correctly called peristerite, as a variety of the Na-rich end member albite of the plagioclase feldspar family. It is characterized by its iridescence and adularescence, and may therefore be described as a type of moonstone.
