LABRADORITE, or LABRADOR SPAR  , a lime-soda felspar of the plagioclase (q.v.) group, often cut and polished as an ornamental stone . It takes its name from the coast of Labrador, where it was discovered, as boulders, by the Moravian Mission about 1770, and specimens were soon afterwards sent to the secretary in London, the Rev . B . Latrobe . The felspar itself is generally of a dull grey colour, with a rather greasy lustre, but many specimens exhibit in certain directions a magnificent of low, rounded hills, seldom rising more than 500 It. above the surrounding general level . Minerals.—The mineral wealth is undeveloped . Thick beds of excellent iron ore cover large areas in the interior and along the shores of Hudson and Ungava Bays . Large areas of mineralized Huronian rocks have also been discovered, similar to areas in other parts of Canada, where they contain valuable deposits of gold, copper, nickel and lead ; good prospects of these metals have been found . Climate.—The climate ranges from cold temperate on the southern coasts to arctic on Hudson Strait, and is generally so rigorous that it is doubtful if the country is fit for agriculture north of 51°, except on the low grounds near the coast . On James Bay good crops of potatoes and other roots are grown at Fort George, 540 N., while about the head of Hamilton Inlet, on the east coast, and in nearly the same latitude, similar crops are easily cultivated . On the outer coasts the climate is more rigorous, being affected by the floating ice borne southwards on the Arctic current . In the interior at Mistassini, 50° 30' N , a crop of potatoes is raised annually, but they rarely mature .

No attempts at agriculture have been made elsewhere inland . Owing to the

absence of grass plains, there is little likelihood that it will ever be a grazing district . There are only two seasons in the interior: winter begins early in October, with the freezing of the small lakes, and lasts until the middle of June, when the ice on rivers and lakes melts and summer suddenly bursts forth . From unconnected observations the lowest temperatures of the interior range from -50° F. to -6o° F., and are slightly higher along the coast . The mean summer temperature of the interior is about 55° F., with frosts during every month in the northern portion . On the Atlantic coast and in Hudson Bay the larger bays freeze.solid between the 1st and 15th of December, and these coasts remain ice-bound until late in June . Hudson Strait is usually sufficiently open for navigation about the loth of July . Vegetation.—The southern half is included in the sub-Arctic forest belt, and nine species of trees constitute the whole arborescent flora of this region; these species are the white birch, poplar, aspen, cedar . Banksian pine, white and black spruce, balsam fir and larch . The forest is continuous over the southern portion to 53° N., the only exceptions being the summits of rocky hills and the outer islands of the Atlantic and Hudson Bay, while the low margins and river valleys contain much valuable timber . To the northward the size and number of barren areas rapidly increase, so that in 55° N. more than half the country is treeless, and two degrees farther north the limit of trees is reached, leaving, to the northward, only barrens covered with low Arctic flowering plants, sedges and lichens . Fisheries .

—The fisheries along the shores of the Gulf of St

Lawrence and of the Atlantic form practically the only industry of the white population scattered along the coasts, as well as of a large proportion of the inhabitants of Newfoundland . The census (1891) of Newfoundland gave 10,478 men, 2081 women and 828 children employed in the Labrador fishery in 861 vessels, of which the tonnage amounted to 33,689; the total catch being 488,788 quintals of cod, 12i5 tierces of salmon and 3828 barrels of herring, which, compared with the customs returns for 188o, showed an increase of cod and decreases of salmon and herring . The salmon fishery along the Atlantic coast is now very small, the decrease being probably due to excessive use of cod-traps . The cod fishery is now carried on along the entire Atlantic coast and into the eastern part of Ungava Bay, where excellent catches have been made since 1893 . The annual value of the fisheries on the Canadian portion of the coast is about $350,000 . The fisheries of Hudson Bay and of the interior are wholly undeveloped, though both the bay and the large lakes of the interior are well stocked with several species of excellent fish, including Arctic trout, brook trout, lake trout, white fish, sturgeon and cod . Population . The population is approximately 14,500, or about one person to every 35 sq. m.; it is made up of 3500 Indians, 2000 Eskimo and goon whites . The last are confined to the coasts and to the Hudson Bay Company's trading posts of the interior . On the Atlantic coast they are largely immigrants from Newfoundland, together with descendants of English fishermen and Hudson Bay Company's servants . To the north of Hamilton Inlet they.are of more or less mixed blood from marriage with Eskimo women . The Newfoundland census of toot gave 3634 as the number of permanent white residents along the Atlantic coast, and the Canadian census (1891) gave a white population of J728, mostly French Canadians, scattered along the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, while the whites living at the inland posts did not exceed fifty persons .

It is difficult to give more than a rough approximation of the number of the native population, owing to their habits of roving from one trading

post to another, and the consequent liability of counting the same family several times if the returns are computed from the books of the various posts, the only available data for an enumeration . The following estimate is arrived play of colours—blue, green, orange, purple or red; the colour in some specimens changing when the stone is viewed in different directions . This optical effect, known sometimes as " labradorescence," seems due in some cases to the presence of minute laminae of certain minerals, like gothite or haematite, arranged darallel to the surface which reflects the colour; but in other cases it may be caused not so much by inclusions as by a delicate lamellar structure in the felspar . An aventurine effect is produced by the presence of microscopic enclosures . The original labradorite was found in the neighbourhood of Nain, notably in a lagoon about 50 M. inland, and in St Paul's Island . Here it occurs with hypersthene, of a rich bronzy sheen, forming a coarse-grained norite . When wet, the stones are remarkably brilliant, and have been called by the natives " fire rocks." Russia has also yielded chatoyant labradorite, especially near Kiev and in Finland; a fine blue labradorite has been brought from Queensland; and the mineral is also known in several localities in the United States, as at Keeseville, in Essex county, New York . The ornamental stone from south Norway, now largely used as a decorative material in architecture, owes its beauty to a felspar with a blue opalescence, often called labradorite, but really a kind of orthoclase which Professor W . C . Brogger has termed cryptoperthite, whilst the rock in which it occurs is an augite-syenite called by him laurvigite, from its chief locality, Laurvik in Norway . Common labradorite, without play of colour, is an important constituent of such rocks as gabbro, diorite, andesite, dolerite and basalt . (See PLAGIOCLASE.) Ejected crystals of labradorite are found on Monti Rossi, a double parasitic cone on Etna .

The

term labradorite is unfortunately used also as a rock-name, having been applied by Fouque and Levy to a group of basic rocks rich in augite and poor in olivine . (F . W .