Banded Agate Bookend

I bought this agate bookend in the family- operated Creetown Gem Rock Museum, Galloway which has a fabulous display of gemstones, crystals, minerals, rocks and fossils. Agate is often a round nodule, with concentric bands like the rings of a tree trunk. Here you see one half propping up a favourite book. Each individual agate is formed by filling a cavity in the host rock while under tremendous pressure.

'Land of Mountain and Flood: The Geology and Landforms of Scotland' has wonderful illustrations of the mountains, lochs, islands and sandy beaches that are evidence of our geological history which began 3,500 billion years ago and, of course, is still continuing. The land that makes up Scotland today has travelled over the planet and has not always belonged even to the same landmass. I find the subject fascinating, and this gorgeous bookend, forged when the world was a boiling cauldron of volcanic rocks and ancient lavas, a reminder that our lives are a blip on this time scale, and our blipfotos would not register at all!