The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 1 (of 2)Geikie, Archibald
History
The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Volume 1 (of 2)
Geikie, Archibald
Volcanoes -- Great Britain
Taken from Sheet 107 of the Geological Survey of Scotland on the scale
of one inch to a mile. The white ground (A) marks the general body of
the Lewisian gneiss. This is traversed by dykes of dolerite (B), which
are cut by later dykes of highly basic material (peridotite, picrite,
etc., P). The gneiss and its system of dykes is overlain unconformably
by the nearly horizontal Torridon Sandstone (_t_), which is injected by
sheets of oligoclase-porphyry (F).]
For the production of these dykes a series of fissures was first opened
through the fundamental complex of the gneiss, having a general trend
from E.S.E. to W.N.W., running in parallel lines for many miles, and so
close together in some places that fifteen or twenty of them occurred
within a horizontal space of one mile. The fissures were probably not
all formed at the same time; at all events, the molten materials that
rose in them exhibit distinct evidence of a succession of upwellings
from the igneous magma below.
Considered simply from the petrographical point of view, the materials
that have filled the fissures have been arranged by Mr. Teall in the
following groups: 1. Ultrabasic dykes, sometimes massive (peridotites),
sometimes foliated (talcose schists containing carbonates and sometimes
gedrite); 2. Basic dykes which where massive take the forms of dolerite
and epidiorite, and where foliated appear as hornblende-schist, the
same dyke often presenting the three conditions of dolerite, epidiorite
and hornblende-schist; 3. Dykes of peculiar composition, comprising
microcline-mica rocks and biotite-diorite with macro-poikilitic
plagioclase; 4. Granites and gneissose granites (biotite-granite with
microcline); 5. Pegmatites (microcline-quartz rocks with a variable
amount of oligoclase or albite).[55]
[Footnote 55: _Annual Report of Geological Survey for 1895_, p. 18 of
reprint.]
Distinct evidence of a succession of eruptions can be made out among
these rocks. By far the largest proportion of the dykes consists
of basic materials. The oldest and most abundant of them are of
plagioclase-augite rocks, which, where uncrushed, differ in no
essential feature of structure or composition from the dolerites and
basalts of more modern periods, though they have been plentifully
changed into epidiorite and hornblende-schist.[56] They present,
too, most of the broad features that characterize the dykes of later
times--the central more coarsely-crystalline portion, the marginal band
of finer grain, passing occasionally into what was probably a basic
glass, and the transverse jointing. They belong to more than one period
of emission, for they cross each other. They vary in width up to nearly
200 feet, and sometimes run with singular persistence completely across
the whole breadth of the strip of gneiss in the west of Sutherland and
Ross. Dozens of dykes have been followed by the Geological Survey for
distances of ten or twelve miles.
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