Geological Observations on South AmericaDarwin, Charles
Science
Geological Observations on South America
Darwin, Charles
Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Geology -- South America; Mollusks, Fossil -- South America; Paleontology
folia to a thickness of about four geographical miles, and then
upturned at an angle of forty degrees; whilst, in the southern part of
this same Archipelago, the cleavage-laminae of closely allied rocks,
which none would imagine had ever been horizontal, dip at nearly the
same angle, to nearly the same point?
Seeing, then, that foliated schists indisputably are sometimes produced
by the metamorphosis of homogeneous fissile rocks; seeing that
foliation and cleavage are so closely analogous in the several
above-enumerated respects; seeing that some fissile and almost
homogeneous rocks show incipient mineralogical changes along the planes
of their cleavage, and that other rocks with a fissile structure
alternate with, and pass into varieties with a foliated structure, I
cannot doubt that in most cases foliation and cleavage are parts of the
same process: in cleavage there being only an incipient separation of
the constituent minerals; in foliation a much more complete separation
and crystallisation.
The fact often referred to in this chapter, of the foliation and the
so- called strata in the metamorphic series,—that is, the alternating
masses of different varieties of gneiss, mica-schist, and
hornblende-slate, etc.,—being parallel to each other, at first appears
quite opposed to the view, that the folia have no relation to the
planes of original deposition. Where the so-called beds are not very
thick and of widely different mineralogical composition from each
other, I do not think that there is any difficulty in supposing that
they have originated in an analogous manner with the separate folia. We
should bear in mind what thick strata, in ordinary sedimentary masses,
have obviously been formed by a concretionary process. In a pile of
volcanic rocks on the Island of Ascension, there are strata, differing
quite as much in appearance as the ordinary varieties of the
metamorphic schists, which undoubtedly have been produced, not by
successive flowings of lava, but by internal molecular changes. Near
Monte Video, where the stratification, as it would be called, of the
metamorphic series is, in most parts, particularly well developed,
being as usual, parallel to the foliation, we have seen that a mass of
chloritic schist, netted with quartz-veins, is entangled in gneiss, in
such a manner as to show that it had certainly originated in some
process of segregation: again, in another spot, the gneiss tended to
pass into hornblendic schist by alternating with layers of quartz; but
these layers of quartz almost certainly had never been separately
deposited, for they were absolutely continuous with the numerous
intersecting veins of quartz. I have never had an opportunity of
tracing for any distance, along the line both of strike and of dip, the
so-called beds in the metamorphic schists, but I strongly suspect that
they would not be found to extend with the same character, very far in
the line either of their dip or strike. Hence I am led to believe, that
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