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
[Footnote 56: See Mr. Teall, _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._ vol. xli.
(1885), p. 133.]
Later in time, and much less abundant, are certain highly basic
dykes--peridotites with schistose modifications--which cut across the
dolerites in a more nearly east-and-west direction. There are likewise
occasional dykes of peculiar composition, which, as above stated,
have been distinguished by Mr. Teall as microcline-mica rocks and
biotite-diorite.
Last of all comes a group of thoroughly acid rocks--varieties of
granite and pegmatite--which form intrusive sheets and dykes. The
granites contain biotite with microcline, and are sometimes gneissose.
The pegmatites are microcline-quartz rocks with a variable amount
of oligoclase or albite. These dykes coincide in direction with the
basalts and dolerites, but they are apt to run together into belts of
granite and pegmatite, sometimes 1500 feet broad.
Up to the present time no evidence has been found of any superficial
outpouring of material in connection with this remarkable series of
dykes in the Lewisian gneiss. That they may have been concomitant
with true volcanic eruptions may be plausibly inferred from the close
analogy which, in spite of their antiquity and the metamorphism they
have undergone, they still present to the system of dykes that forms
a part of the great Tertiary volcanic series of Antrim and the Inner
Hebrides. The close-set fissures running in a W.N.W direction, the
abundant uprise into these fissures of basic igneous rocks, followed by
a later and more feeble extravasation of acid material, are features
which in a singular manner anticipate the volcanic phenomena of
Tertiary time.
There can be no question as to the high antiquity of these dykes. They
were already in place before the advent of those extraordinary vertical
lines of shearing which have so greatly affected both the gneiss and
the dykes; and these movements, in turn, had long been accomplished
before the Torridon Sandstone was laid down, for the dykes, with their
abundant deformation, run up to and pass beneath the sandstone which
buries them and all the rocks with which they are associated. Though
later than the original fundamental complex, the dykes have become so
integral and essential a part of the gneiss as it now exists that they
must be unhesitatingly grouped with it.
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