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
With so wide an extension of the subterranean relics of volcanic
energy, it is surely not too much to hope that somewhere there may
have been preserved, and may still be discovered, proofs that these
eruptive rocks opened a connection with the surface, and that we
may thus recognize vestiges of the superficial products of actual
Archæan volcanoes. Among the pebbles in the conglomerates of the
Torridon Sandstone there occur, indeed, fragments of felsites which
possess great interest from the perfection with which they retain
some of the characteristic features of younger lavas. Mr. Teall has
described their minute structure. They are dark, purplish, compact
rocks, consisting of a spherulitic micropegmatitic, micropoikilitic or
microcrystalline groundmass, in which are imbedded porphyritic crystals
or crystal-groups of felspar, often oligoclase. These spherulitic rocks
occasionally show traces of perlitic structure. They bear a striking
resemblance to some of the Uriconian felsites of Shropshire, pebbles
from which occur in the Longmynd rocks.[57] These fragments suggest
the existence of volcanic materials at the surface when the Torridon
Sandstone was deposited. Possibly they may represent some vanished
Lewisian lavas. But the time between the uprise of the dykes and the
formation of the Torridonian series was vast enough for the advent of
many successive volcanic episodes. The pebbles may therefore be the
relics of eruptions that took place long after the period of the dykes.
[Footnote 57: _Annual Report of Geological Survey for 1895_, p. 21 of
reprint.]
Among the Torridonian strata no undoubted trace of any contemporaneous
volcanic eruptions has been met with.[58] The only relics of volcanic
rocks in this enormous accumulation of sediments are the pebbles just
referred to, which may be referable to a time long anterior to the very
oldest parts of the Torridonian series.
[Footnote 58: The supposed tuff referred to in _Quart. Journ. Geol.
Soc._ vol. xlviii. (1892), p. 168, is probably not of truly volcanic
origin.]
That Archæan time witnessed volcanic eruptions on a considerable scale,
and with great variety of petrographical material, has recently been
shown in detail by Mr. Otto Nordenskjöld from a study of the rocks
of Småland in Sweden. He has described a series of acid outbursts,
including masses of rhyolite and dacite, together with agglomerates and
tuffs, likewise basic eruptions, with dioritic rocks, augite-porphyrite
and breccia. He refers these rocks to the same age as most of the
Scandinavian gneisses, and remarks that though they have undergone
much mechanical deformation and metamorphism, they have yet here and
there retained some of their distinctive volcanic structures, such as
the spherulitic.[59] When the large area of Lewisian gneiss forming
the chain of the Outer Hebrides is investigated it may possibly supply
examples of a similar series of ancient volcanic masses.
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